the unconditional surrender to facts, and the choice of means to reach their ends, are as admirable as with ants and bees.
They are heavy at the fine arts, but adroit at the coarse; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but the best iron-masters, colliers, wood-combers, and tanners in Europe.
The spirit of system, attention to details, and the subordination of details, or the not driving things too finely .. constitute that despatch of business which makes the mercantile power of England.
They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it.
They have no Indian taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for a badge or a proclamation.
They cannot well read a principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns.
They spend largely on their fabric, and await the slow return .. no people have such thoroughness;-from the highest to the lowest, every man meaning to be master of his art.
They have wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim.
The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system. .. Their social classes are made by statute. ...Their system of education is factitious… .. Their church is artificial
the intellectual organization of the English admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas among them all
These private reserved mute family-men can adopt a public end with all their heat .. The difference of rank does not divide the national heart.
Every man carries the English system in his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does therein the best he can. ..
the one thing the English value is pluck
They dare to displease
The Englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns
Every man in this polished country consults only his convenience
every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable
A Frenchman may possibly be clean; an Englishman is conscientiously clean
he dearly loves his house
Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes
The English power resides also in their dislike of change. They have difficulty in bringing their reason to act, and on all occasions use their memory first .. They hate innovation
Cold, repressive manners prevail. No enthusiasm is permitted, except at the opera. They avoid everything marked. They require a tone of voice that excites no attention in the room.
They are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they require plain- dealing of others.
They are not fond of ornaments, and if they wear them, they must be gems
They hate the French, as frivolous; they hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Germans, as professors.
their eyes seem to be set at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know, with the best faith in the world that nothing else exists.
English treasons never can succeed; For they're so open-hearted, you may know Their own most secret thoughts
Meat and wine produce no effect on them: they are just as cold, quiet and composed at the end, as at the beginning of dinner.
it is rare that more than two eat together, and oftenest one eats alone
They .. suspect any poetic insinuation, or any hint for the conduct of life .. as if somebody were fumbling at the umbilical cord, and might stop their supplies
resolute in maintaining their whim and perversity
Being both vascular and highly organized, so as to be very sensible of pain; and intellectual, so as to see reason and glory in a matter.
There are multitudes of rude young English who have the self-sufficiency and bluntness of their nation, and .. disdain of the rest of mankind ..
He says no, and serves you, and your thanks disgust him.
They like the sayers of No, better than the sayers of Yes. .. They dare to displease, they do not speak to expectation
On deliberate choice, and from grounds of character, he has elected his part to live and die for, and dies with grandeur
After running each tendency to an extreme, they try another tack with equal heat
the spleen will hereafter be found in the Englishman, not found in the American, and differencing the one from the other.
Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength
not a man of many words, but short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly, and was obstinate and hard
The conservative, money-loving, lord- loving English are yet liberty-loving
There is no freak so ridiculous but some Englishman has attempted to immortalize by money and law.
His confidence in the power and performance of his nation makes him provokingly incurious about other nations. He dislikes foreigners
I am afraid that English nature is so rank and aggressive as to be a little incompatible with every other. The world is not wide enough for two.
The Englishman believes that every man must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do not mend his condition. To pay their debts is their national point of honor
An Englishman .. labors three times as many hours in the course of a year as any other European
Primogeniture is a cardinal rule of English property
Every man who becomes rich buys land, and does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which he hopes to rise.
The English tenant would defend his lord to the last extremity.
The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition of its church;
The English, abhorring change in all things, .. are dreadfully given to cant.
A STRONG common-sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a thousand years
A taste for plain strong speech, what is called a biblical style, marks the English
Mixture is a secret of the English island; and, in their dialect, the male principle is the Saxon; the female, the Latin; and they are combined in every discourse.
The English shrink from a generalization
Every one of them is a thousand years old, and lives by his memory: and when you say this, they accept it as praise..
The science is false by not being poetic. It isolates the reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain; whilst reptile or mollusk only exists in system, in relation.
They parry earnest speech with banter and levity; they laugh you down, or they change the subject.
the two complexions, or two styles of mind,- the perceptive class, and the practical finality class,-are ever in counterpoise,
the national courage, not rash and petulant, but considerate and determined
Every one is on his good behavior, and must be dressed for dinner at six.
They cannot see beyond England, nor in England can they transcend the interests of the governing classes
they never let out all the length of all the reins
Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that they hold all they gain
They are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horse which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down every racer in the field
The fagging of the schools is repeated in the social classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to those below him in the social scale, as he looks for none from those above him
The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is..
the moral peculiarity of the Saxon race,-its commanding sense of right and wrong.. This conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship..
you could know little about them till you had seen them long .. in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity they were grand.
each fragrance reminding you of this person called France.
The seating is well up to the usual French standard, being very soft
a people essentially moderate and cheerful, fond of honest work and of good living, cautious and thrifty almost to a fault, praising and practising reasonableness as the highest virtue ..
The tradition that impels her is revolutionary ..
anyone who lives in France and feels himself a Frenchman is a Frenchman ..
Against every form of superstition and fanaticism, French irony remains a unique weapon.
If there is an undeniable Frenchness about Rennes and Ajaccio .. it is because the language and the styles of Paris have been superimposed upon the local dialects, customs, and fashions.
France is not primarily a Mediterannean country.
As a race the French do not exist, and are very proud of the fact.
Political integration came first; the king's language followed the king's arms.
The probity so highly praised by Rivarol does exist, and is one of the cherished possessions of France; but it is found in the thought, not in the words.
the key to the French mind is not to be found by means of physical tests, skull measurements or vital statistics. A far more reliable indication would be a certain quality in the French smile.
Lucidity, courtesy, are virtues which the French praise highly and honestly strive to practice.
What is peculiarly French in the French character is but a cloak. The French are rather proud of that cloak, and take good care ot it.
They have little taste and little aptitude for the mystical subtleties of NeoPlatinism. They leave heresies to the Byzantine mind.
The bourgeoisie ..was shrewd, realistic, inclined to mockery, with no slight admixture of the cynical.
Rabelais..Moliere..La Fontaine,..Voltaire..kept alive..the broad mocking realism of the medieval bourgeois…
.It is the supreme asset of the French in the colonial field that, as a nation, they are entirely free from race prejudice…
France challenges everything .. France is a collective and age-long striving for human values. She is most French when she is universal.
We never see this kind of personal assiduity in the USA
Upon all topics we are accustomed to think, perhaps, with more latitude, religion, politics, morals, everything.
The old and the middle-aged are more attended to here than with us
I begin to see the difference between France and us. Here they are accustomed to BE governed. WE are accustomed to GOVERN.
there is the insularity phenomenon. One is suspicious of the continent, and the closest continental danger is France
Europeans in general have always tended to be more cynical than Americans, less sanguine
As Western society becomes more individualistic, a successful life has come to be equated with having high self-esteem
Many Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth
the women themselves swear freely