How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Paris] hung before him this morning, the vast bright Bablyon, like some huge iridescent object, a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably marked. (2.2.8)
Sheesh, get a little more poetic on us why don't you, Henry James? This description is one of the most intense bits of wordplay in all of The Ambassadors. It captures just how much the city of Paris has swept Strether off his feet: by saying that the city itself blurs the differences between things, it suggests that its beauty totally blurs Strether's ideas of good and bad. Things get even blurrier for him as he realizes that Paris isn't the sinful, terrible place that Mrs. Newsome has led him to believe.
Quote #2
The balcony, the distinguished front, testified suddenly, for Strether's fancy, to something that was up and up; they placed the whole case materially, and as by an admirable image, on a level that he found himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach. (2.2.14)
Descriptions of setting are usually pretty symbolic in James novels, and this passage is no exception. Here, Strether looks up at the balcony of Chad's Paris apartment and realizes that the balcony symbolizes a goal that he would like to achieve some day. He's not exactly sure what that goal is, but he knows it's connected to the amazing life that Chad is leading in Paris.
Quote #3
In the brownness were glints of gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. (3.2.1)
Strether goes to visit Maria Gostrey in his Paris apartment, and the first thing he notices is that the place is filled with lots of interesting objects. His immediate sensation at seeing these objects is the feeling that there's an entire world he's been missing out on his whole life. Now he's having this whole new world (cue the Aladdin soundtrack) held under his nose like a flower, and it's up to him to decide if he wants to explore it further or scuttle back to Mrs. Newsome in Woollett.