- Ellen: Newland. You couldn't be happy if it meant being cruel. If we act any other way I'll be making you act against what I love in you most. And I can't go back to that way of thinking. Don't you see? I can't love you unless I give you up.
- Ted Archer: The day before she died, she asked to see me alone, remember? She said she knew we were safe with you and always would be because once when she asked you to, you gave up the thing you wanted most.
- Newland Archer: [after a long pause] She never asked. She never asked me.
- Ellen Olenska: Is fashion such a serious consideration?
- Newland Archer: Among those who have nothing more serious to consider.
- Ellen Olenska: I think we should look at reality, not dreams.
- Newland Archer: I just want us to be together!
- Ellen Olenska: I can't be your wife, Newland! Is it your idea that I should live with you as your mistress?
- Newland Archer: I want... Somehow, I want to get away with you... and... and find a world where words like that don't exist!
- Newland Archer: What could you possibly gain that could make up for the scandal?
- Ellen Olenska: My freedom!
- Ellen Olenska: Are you very much in love with her?
- Newland Archer: As much as a man can be.
- Ellen Olenska: Do you think there's a limit?
- Ellen Olenska: Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it was all straight up and down like Fifth Avenue. All the cross streets numbered and big honest labels on everything.
- Newland Archer: Everything is labeled, but everybody is not.
- Ellen Olenska: Then I must count on you for warnings too.
- Ellen Olenska: They never knew what it meant to be tempted, but you did. You understood. I've never known that before - and it's better than anything I've known.
- The Narrator: Carriages waited at the curb for the entire performance. It was widely known in New York, but never acknowledged, that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.
- The Narrator: Archer enjoyed such challenges to convention. He questioned conformity in private; but, in public, he upheld family and tradition. This was a world balanced so precariously that it's harmony could be shattered by a whisper.
- Mrs. Mingott: Your name was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's covered you with shame.
- Newland Archer: You have been a way a very long time.
- Ellen Olenska: Centuries and centuries. So long, I'm sure I'm dead and buried, in this dear old place, as heaven.
- Newland Archer: Who has the right to make her life over, if she hasn't? Why should we bury a woman alive if her husband prefers to live with whores?
- The Narrator: It was not the custom in New York drawing rooms for a lady to get up and walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. But, the Countess did not observe this rule.
- The Narrator: As for the madness with Madame Olenska, Archer trained himself to remember it as the last of his discarded experiments. She remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.
- Newland Archer: All the older women like and admire you. They want to help.
- Ellen Olenska: I know. I know, as long as they don't hear anything unpleasant. Does no one here want to know - want to know the truth, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only asks you to pretend.
- Mrs. Mingott: I told him he should have married you!
- Ellen Olenska: [laughs] And, what did he say?
- Mrs. Mingott: Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out.
- The Narrator: They all lived in a kind of hieroglyphics world. The real thing was never said or done or even thought; but, only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.
- Ellen Olenska: May I tell you what most interests me about New York; not all the blind obeying of traditions, somebody else's traditions; it seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it a copy of another country. Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the opera with Larry Lefferts?
- Ted Archer: [about his fiancée] I'll be back on the first, and our wedding's not till the fifth.
- Newland Archer: I'm surprised you even remembered the date.
- The Narrator: The burden of her flesh had made it long since impossible to go up and down stairs. So, with characteristic independence, she had established herself on the ground floor of her house. From a sitting room, there was an unexpected vista of her bedroom. Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this arrangement - which recalled scenes in French fiction. This was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies.
- Ellen Olenska: Cousin May wrote. She asked you to take care of me.
- Newland Archer: I didn't need to be asked.
- Ellen Olenska: Why? Does that mean I'm so helpless and defenseless? Or, that women here are so blessed they never feel need?
- Newland Archer: What sort of need?
- Ellen Olenska: Oh, please don't ask me. I don't speak your language.
- The Narrator: He could feel her dropping back to an inexpressive girlishness. Her conscious had been eased of its burden. It was wonderful, he thought, how such depths of feeling could coexist with such an absence of imagination.
- Newland Archer: Is this really so difficult?
- Mrs. Mingott: The entire family is difficult! Not one of them wants to be different. When they are different, they end up like Ellen's parents. No masks. Continental wanderers, dragging Ellen about, lavishing on her an expensive but incoherent education. Out of all of them, I don't believe there's one that takes after me, but my little Ellen. You've got a quick eye. Why in the world didn't you marry her?
- Newland Archer: Well, for one thing, she wasn't there to be married.
- Mrs. Mingott: No. To be sure.
- Ted Archer: Annie made me swear to do three things in Paris: get her the score of the latest Debussy songs, go to the Grand Guignol, and see Madam Olenska.
- The Narrator: Regina Beaufort came from an old South Carolina family; but, her husband Julius, who passed for an Englishman, was known to have dissipated habits, a bitter tongue, and mysterious antecedents. His marriage assured him a social position, but not necessarily respect.
- The Narrator: Only by actually passing through the Crimson drawing room, could one see "The Return of Spring" - the much discussed nude by Bougereau, which Beaufort had had the audacity to hang in plain sight.
- Sillerton Jackson: Certain nuisances escape Beaufort.
- Mrs. Archer: Oh, necessarily, Beaufort is a vulgar man.
- Newland Archer: Nevertheless, no business nuisance escapes him. Most of New York trusts him with its affairs.
- Mrs. Archer: My grandfather, Newland, always used to say to mother, "Don't let that fellow Beaufort be introduced to the girls."
- Mrs. Archer: Poor Ellen. We must always remember the eccentric bringing up she had. What can you expect of a girl who's allowed to wear black satin at her Coming Out Ball?
- Mrs. Mingott: When's the wedding to be?
- Newland Archer: Oh, as soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me up, Mrs. Mingott.
- Mrs. Welland: We must give them time to know each other a little better, mama.
- Mrs. Mingott: Know each other? Everybody in New York has always known everybody. Don't wait till the bubbles off the wine. Marry them before Lent. I may catch pneumonia any winter now and I want to give the Wedding Breakfast.
- Henry van der Luyden: Well, it's the principal that I dislike. I mean to say, if a member of a well-known family is backed by that family, it should be considered final.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
