Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [1791]

It was the old New York way, of taking life “without effusion of blood”; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 1791

Note

A compressed manifesto of the social order: the lethal irony of ‘without effusion of blood’ placed against ‘dreaded scandal more than disease’ makes the whole moral economy of the tribe legible in one sentence.