American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

More from Character and Opinion in the United States

• Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.
• Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.
• Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
• Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
• I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
• Only the dead have seen the end of war.