Some of the youths were spooning great lumps of meat down their throats with their knives, while others helped themselves, two or three at a time, with their own knives and forks, from the same dish! I really never saw any thing so disagreeable.
no person who ventures to oppose himself for one instant to the current of popular sentiment, has much chance of success. No one, indeed, of any party in that country, can escape very rough handling...
Any such accumulation and distribution of property, however, in America, is abhorrent to the feelings of the inhabitants
the whole of an argument went for nothing, the instant it was discovered that some minor point of information had escaped the traveller’s notice; though, when this trivial deficiency was supplied, the original reasoning stood as firm, and often firmer than before.
the unpleasant truth seems to be, that nothing whatsoever is venerated in America merely on account of its age, or, indeed, on any other account.
it is a rule we saw universally observed in America, never to think how the men shall fare till every female has been fully accommodated.
the movable state of the society, the desultory and improvident habits of the great mass of the population, and the fluctuating nature of the public responsibilities
The discipline .. Is effective, but somewhat rigid ..
In the ordinary business of their lives—I mean their busy, money-making, electioneering lives— the Americans have little or no time for companionship, that I could ever see or hear of, with the women, still less for any habitual confidential intercourse.
England is pre-eminent in affairs, and the qualities which belong to them, coolness, economy, precision, method, perseverance
... The old Gaulish gaiety, often savoring somewhat of the camp, a something of the free and easy bordering on the promiscuous (un sans-façon expansif qui frise la promiscuité).
... these towns, so simple in their architecture, but so fastidiously neat in their spacious streets;
If, then, there were a railroad between London and Paris, the French, who have now little knowledge of business, would go to London, where the instinct of method is in the blood, to learn.
the pride of the statesman and the merchant, which feeds only on power and wealth; which for the country desires conquests, vast colonies, all the Gibraltars and St Helenas, eagle’s nests by which all seas and all shores are commanded
Amongst us, a vain-glorious pride, which longs for the unreal, for ideal pleasures; a thirst after applause for self, after glory for our country ...
Paris might perhaps be led to free itself from the filth of centuries, which formerly gave it its name, and against which eighteen hundred years later, Voltaire, whom the ancient monarchy and the faith of our fathers could not withstand, warred in vain.
The great forethought and spirit of order which in England they suck in with their mothers’ milk, preside in every part, and make it impossible that the trains should fall foul of each other, or that the cars should run down unlucky travellers
The English have less of the gift of speech, but more capacity for action, than we have. And it is owing to this, that they have found means to extend their colonial possessions, while all other nations were losing theirs
What amongst us would pass for a youthful imprudence or a pretty trick, is severely frowned upon by the English and Americans, and particularly by the Americans of New England, who are, as has been said, double-distilled English.
What amongst us would pass for a youthful imprudence or a pretty trick, is severely frowned upon by the English and Americans, and particularly by the Americans of New England, who are, as has been said, double-distilled English.
exhibiting an example of that complete submission and flat despair, of which our annals exhibit so many instances, and the English so few
Sunday in the United States, instead of being, as with us, a day of recreation and gaiety, is, according to the English custom, carried to a greater degree of rigour by the Anglo-Americans, consecrated to prayer, meditation, and retirement.
see how he struggles in close fight with the rivers, with the swamps, with the primeval forests; see how he slaughters the wolf and the bear, how he exterminates the Indian, who in his eyes is only another wild beast! ...
The Englishman divides his time, and does but one thing at once; in the morning he is wholly absorbed in business; in the evening he plays the man of leisure, reposing and enjoying life
The American of the Northwest, whose character now gives the tone in the United States, is permanently a man of business, he is always the Englishman of the morning.
among us there is not a schoolboy who has not made a vaudeville, a ballad, or a republican or monarchial constitution; in Massachusetts and Connecticut, there is not a labourer who has not invented a machine or a tool.
he always has something to be done, he is always in a terrible hurry.
The American is always bargaining; he always has one bargain afoot, another just finished, and several more in meditation. All that he has, all that he sees, is merchandise in his eyes.
To everything of a private nature, to everything that takes up his time and demands his attention, he applies the mercantile principle, nothing for nothing.
he is in the habit of subscribing to all useful objects, and he does so without reluctance or regret, oftener than we are accustomed to do, and more liberally also
This spirit of exclusiveness which prevails in society at home, appears again in the relations of the English with other people. The Englishman cannot fraternise with the Red Skins or the blacks
An American of the North or of the South, whether he be rich or poor, ignorant or learned, avoids a contact with the negro, as if he were infected with the plague.
The Englishman ... willingly bows to the authority of a text ... he obeys it without an effort and by instinct. In a word the Englishman has in himself the principle of self-government.
They ... Assert that the will of the people is, always and necessarily, justice; the infallibility of the people in every thing and at all times has, in fact, become the received doctrine
The American press is free in so far as it gives no bonds and pays no stamp duty, but it is dependent on a capricious, despotic, and not very enlightened public opinion, which requires it to flatter the passion of the hour, and does not look to it for lessons of morality.
no people has received finer and acuter senses than ours. Surely, our nerves are more sensitive, our ear and our palate more delicate than those of the English.
From these circumstances and influences, has resulted a new political and physiological phenomenon, a hitherto unknown variety of the human race ...
If one hundred Americans were going to be shot, they would contend for the priority, so strong is their habit of competition.”
The American houses are low and slight; the walls are generally only a brick and a half, sometimes only one in thickness
In the mail-coaches, the best seats are always yielded to women, without regard to the order in which the names are booked. The husband also does the marketing and often brings home the provisions himself.
they face bankruptcy, as old grenadiers march upon a battery under a fire of grape-shot.
the austere reserve of American manners, to their rigid habits of life, and to the religious severity which exists here by the side of the great multiplicity of sects.
in regard to Sunday, for instance, which with us is a holiday, a day of amusement and gaiety, it is here a day of retirement, meditation, silence, and prayer.
I must, however, do America the justice to observe, [166] that, although the desire to make money is universal, yet in the principal and older commercial centres, there is more honesty and less illiberality than amongst us.
American selfishness is less contracted than ours; it does not stoop to petty meannesses; it operates on a more liberal scale.
Pittsburg is, therefore, one of the least amusing cities in the world; there is no interruption of business for six days in the week, except during the three meals, the longest of which occupies hardly ten minutes
In the United States the democratic spirit is infused into all the national habits, and all the customs of society; it besets and startles at every step the foreigner, who, before landing in the country, had no suspicion to what a degree every nerve and fibre had been steeped in aristocracy by a European education.
every American, in private life, treats the [198] humblest of his white domestics with more respect, than most of them show, in public life, to officers of the highest rank.
The American can support a constant and unrelaxing devotion to labour; he does not feel the need of amusement and recreation.
His only means, and the object of his whole thought, is to subdue the material world, or, in other words, it is industry in its various branches, business, speculation, work, action.
It is quite impossible for him to fall in love with a clearing, to feel the same transports at the success of a manufacture as for the safety of a friend or the happiness of a mistress;
nowhere do you see specimens of that sordid avarice, of which examples are so common among us.
The American ... Respects his own person too much not to surround it with a certain degree of decency
whilst we make a traffic of what is most sacred, these shop-keepers exhibit a delicacy and loftiness of feeling, which would have done honor to the most perfect models of chivalry.
The American, essentially practical in his views, will never speculate in tulips, even at New York, although the inhabitants of that city have Dutch blood in their veins. The principal objects of speculation are those subjects which chiefly occupy the calculating minds of the Americans, that is to say, cotton, land, city and town lots, banks, railroads.
The American has a perfect passion for railroads; he loves them .. Not merely because his supreme happiness consists in that speed which annihilates time and space;
nion and the pulpit forbid sensual gratifications, wine, women, and the display of a princely luxury; cards and dice are equally prohibited; the American, therefore, has recourse to business for the strong emotions which he requires to make him feel life.
society here is wholly masculine; woman, who in all countries has little of the spirit of the representative system, here possesses no authority;
All of us, God be thanked, have a period of youth! Among us, women have a real power, although not enumerated in the articles of the Charter; and our national character has many feminine, I will not say effeminate, features.
It is now a universal rule among the Anglo-Americans, that the woman is exempt from all heavy work, and she is never seen, for instance, taking part in the labours of the field, nor in carrying burdens.
The career open to the Americans, as active, bold, and intelligent merchants, is unlimited, and is entered with admirable spirit and success; they beat their rivals, even the English, on every field.
Our national character has little disposition for business; we work from necessity and not from choice. Our ideas have little of a commercial or mechanical turn.
a people with the energy and intelligence which the Americans possess; a people which has like it the genius of industry, which combines perseverance with the resources of ingenuity, which is essentially regular in its habits and orderly in its disposition ...
The aristocracy is driven from power or keeps itself aloof. The mechanics and small proprietors hardly yet begin to raise their heads. The labourers are nothing.
The Middle Class consists of the manufacturers, merchants, lawyers, physicians. A small number of cultivators, and persons devoted to letters or the fine arts, is to be added to these. The democracy is composed of the farmers and mechanics.
you will not find one, who, after having witnessed their effects, would dare to lay his hand upon them; they would fear to be struck dead, like the sacrilegious wretch who touched the ark of the Lord.
to the American, on the contrary, these are all familiar objects; he knows them all by name, at least, and he feels that they are his
he exhibits towards her and every other woman, a degree of attention and respect, which is unknown to many persons amongst us
The character of the American workman is in a high degree honourable, and excites the envy of the European when he compares the prospect here presented to him with the aspect of things in his own country.
The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is so remarkable, that I was constantly endeavouring to account for it.
it is rarely they dine in society, except in taverns and boarding-houses. Then they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and in total silence
it seemed to me that there was something awful and almost unnatural in their loneliness.
the spirit of enterprise or improvement seldom glowed with sufficient ardour to resist the smothering effect of a demand for dollars.
in America, where women are guarded by a sevenfold shield of habitual insignificance, it caused an effect that can hardly be described.
Ladies are rarely seen there, and by far the larger proportion of females deem it an offence against religion to witness the representation of a play. It is in the churches and chapels of the town that the ladies are to be seen in full costume ;
I never saw, or read of any country where religion had so strong a hold upon the women, or a slighter hold upon the men.
To me, the dreary coldness and want of enthusiasm in American manners is one of their greatest defects, and I therefore hailed the demonstrations of general feeling which this day elicits with real pleasure.
The extraordinary familiarity of our poor neighbours startled us at first, and we hardly knew how to receive their uncouth advances, or what was expected of us in return
No one dreams of fastening a door in Western America; I was told that it would be considered as an affront by the whole neighbourhood. I was thus exposed to perpetual and most vexatious interruptions from people whom I had often never seen…
One has but to look at the wife of an American cottager, and ask her age, to be convinced that the life she leads is one of hardship, privation, and labour.
In America, with the exception of dancing, which is almost wholly confined to the unmarried of both sexes, all the enjoyments of the men are found in the absence of the women.
a remarkable peculiarity in the male physiognomy of Americans ; their lips are almost uniformly thin and compressed.
I cannot refrain from expressing the opinion that nearly four years of attentive observation impressed on me, namely, that the moral sense is on every point blunter than with us.
the Americans have either no leisure, or no inclination for those moments of delassement, that all other people, I believe, indulge in.
All the enthusiasm of America is concentrated to the one point of her own emancipation and independence ; on this point nothing can exceed the warmth of her feelings.
Is it to be imagined, that if fifty modifications of this charming young woman were to be met at a party, the men would dare to enter it reeking with whiskey, their lips blackened with tobacco...
This sordid object [BL: the dollar], for ever before their eyes, must inevitably produce a sordid tone of mind, and, worse still, it produces a seared and blunted conscience on all questions of probity.
both Protestant England and Catholic France show an infinitely superior religious and moral aspect to mortal observation
The stagecoaches are heavier and much less comfortable than those of France; to those of England they can bear no comparison.
few ladies have any command of ready money entrusted to them.
The general taste is decidedly bad ; this is obvious, not only from the mass of slipslop poured forth by the daily and weekly press, but from the inflated tone of eulogy in which their insect authors are lauded.
The assumption of equality, however empty, is sufficient, to tincture the manners of the poor with brutal insolence, and subjects the rich to the paltry expediency of sanctioning the falsehood
The reviews of America contain some good clearheaded articles ; but I sought in vain for the playful vivacity and the keenly-cutting satire
At sixteen, often much earlier, education ends, and money-making begins ; the idea that more learning is necessary than can be acquired by that time, is generally ridiculed as absolute monkish bigotry
No people appear more anxious to excite admiration and receive applause than the Americans, yet none take so little trouble, or make so few sacrifices to obtain it.
that overweening complacency and self-esteem, both national and individual, which at once renders them so extremely obnoxious to ridicule, and so peculiarly restive under it.
The Americans have certainly not the same besoin of being amused as other people ; they may be the wiser for this, perhaps, but it makes them less agreeable to a looker-on.