I draw from life - but I always pulp my acquaintance before serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage.

I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.

To an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.

When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.

[On New York City:] Were all America like this fair city, and all, no, only a small proportion of its population like the friends we left there, I should say that the land was the fairest in the world.

Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement.

there is less alms-giving in America than in any other Christian country on the face of the globe. It is not in the temper of the people either to give or to receive.