More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Not even her most fervent imaginings could have rendered him as good as this.
Tempting as it may be, you must never allow your daughters to chaperone or discipline one another. Such arrangements have always proved a recipe for mischief. —MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899
“If you love him: leave. They’ll never let you be together here.”
The living are made of nothing but flaws. The dead, with each passing day in the afterlife, become more and more impeccable to those who remain earthbound. —MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
Look at her, she is made of rose petals, the world will take good care of her.
“To wide-open eyes, then,”
The person who advised that it is always best to tell the truth undoubtedly led a very sound life, although it is difficult to imagine that he would have lasted very long in a society like ours, where appearances are so savagely maintained. —MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
Hysteria is a condition very common in women of the upper classes; the symptoms include nervousness, an inclination to fainting, shortness of breath, insomnia, irascibility, and a tendency to cause trouble. Quacks will prescribe sensory deprivation and all manner of doodads. The best cure, in fact, is heavy consumption of rich foods and several hundred hours in bed, after which the delicate flowers of teatime will come back in as vigorous a state of health as ever. —WOMEN’S SUPERIOR HOME HEALTH MANUAL, 1897 EDITION
we cannot but acknowledge that we have glimpsed in it the future of high society: wealth without class. —FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900
while I am sure many will bemoan the death of an era, I for one think that the inbred old families of this city have reigned long enough, and that if new blood comes from a girl who, no matter her other qualifications, so charmed a connoisseur like Longhorn that he left her everything, I am inclined to say that is not altogether a bad sign.’”
