“I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.” (pages 24-25)

He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this, combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every master in school. (page 27)

D’Invilliers was partially taken in and wholly delighted. In a good-natured way he had almost decided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one part deadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats without stammering, yet evidently washed his hands, was rather a treat. (page 48)

“You’ve just had your eyes opened to the snobbishness of the world in a rather abrupt manner. Princeton invariably gives the thoughtful man a social sense.” (page 78)

“He’s the first contemporary I’ve ever met whom I’ll admit is my superior in mental capacity.” (page 121)

All life was transmitted into terms of their love, all experience, all desires, all ambitions, were nullified—their senses of humor crawled into corners to sleep; their former love-affairs seemed faintly laughable and scarcely regretted juvenalia. (page 175)

“It’s just—us. We’re pitiful, that’s all. The very qualities I love you for are the ones that will always make you a failure.” (page 181)

“Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy.” (page 201)

Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality—he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. (page 242)

“Yes—I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made me morbid to think too much about myself” (page 243)

He found something that he wanted ... not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable; he remembered the sense of security he had found in Burne. (page 247)

“Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.” (page 247)

“I’m restless. My whole generation is restless. I’m sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer.” (page 256)

“I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.” (page 261)