Best 21 quotes in «gilded age quotes» category

A hand moved gracefully over the canvas, releasing the first colorful dot onto a sea of white. Her mind traveled to a different realm, and she joined in spirit with every human being whomever dared to take that first stroke, and she knew the risks; she was willing to pay the price, because wasn’t that what the heart longed for? Whether it be by writing, painting, or music—one only needs to find the strength of courage to walk along the creative path, to search for one’s higher self, and maybe, for just a moment, to gaze into the eyes of God." ― AnneMarie Dapp, Autumn Lady

A European visitor in the 1880s remarked that the only sense not offended by American cooking was hearing.

And English society was was not exactly welcoming to these rich newcomers: Imagine Kim Kardashian marrying Prince Henry today and you get the general idea of the suspicion and disdain that the Americans encountered.

America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again. Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.

An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if a man had money he was free in law and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonized hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.

At least in the Gilded Age age they gilded shit.

A whole summer on this beautiful Pullman Island! What magic might transpire?”—Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

But Pierre had been born with a shrewdness that made him early aware that a failure to believe that human events were ordered by a higher power was regarded by many in the highest positions as obnoxious and even sinful, and as nothing was to be gained by exciting such hostility, it was better to give a silent or even smiling assent to the fatuous idealism to which, particularly in youth, one was so relentlessly exposed.

A whole new world is waiting for us across this river.”—Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

If your party serves the powerful and well-funded interests, and there's no limit to what you can spend, you have a permanent, structural advantage. We're averaging fifty-dollar checks in our campaign, and trying to ward off these seven- or eight-figure checks on the other side. That disparity is pretty striking, and so are the implications. In many ways, we're back in the Gilded Age. We have robber barons buying the government.

I’m a man of words, yet you rob me of them every single time.

Love was like a stock, Lizzie realized. You gambled on its paying off in the long run—but it could just as easily cost you everything.

It was the age of confidence. Arrogance was epidemic.

It was Katelyn’s first time in a skiff, her first time on the river, her first time going to an island. It was the first of many firsts, and her excitement grew with each minute that passed.”—Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

This isn't London, sweetheart. This is New York City and we can spot a fraud from a mile away.

She can go places we cannot, associate with people we cannot, understand things about society types and women that we never can. (Why Mr. Burke hires Violet Strange.)

She would be free like the gulls that sailed the summer breeze.”—Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

This summer can be the adventure of a lifetime, if you let it.”—Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

Setting that little girl loose in her society would be like putting a fox in with the chickens. (Violet Strange's detective boss.)

Soon she would live on one of those magnificent Thousand Islands for the entire summer.” —Katelyn’s Choice by Susan G Mathis

This was, after all, New Orleans in 1890- the Crescent City of the Gilded Age, where aliases of convenience and unconventional living arrangements were anything but out of the ordinary, at least in certain parts of town. Identities were fluid here, and names and appearances weren't always the best guide to telling who was who.