“Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to”

“It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them. ”

“...In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers...”

“Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.”

“To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can't people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner?”

“There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.”

“True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision.”