I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies).

It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs.

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.

I certainly do not lament the decadence of knight errantry, nor wish to exchange the protection of the laws for that of the doughtiest champion who ever set lance in rest; but I do, in truth, believe that this knightly sensitiveness of honorable feeling is the best antidote to the petty soul-degrading transactions of every-day life, and that the total want of it is one reason why this free-born race care so very little for the vulgar virtue called probity.

... it was not very unusual at Washington for a lady to take the arm of a gentleman, who was neither her husband, her father, norher brother. This remarkable relaxation of American decorum has been probably introduced by the foreign legations.

The American spring is by no means so agreeable as the American autumn; both move with faltering step, and slow; but this lingering pace, which is delicious in autumn, is most tormenting in the spring.

Throughout all ranks of society, from the successful merchant, which is the highest, to the domestic serving man, which is the lowest, they are all too actively employed to read, except at such broken moments as may suffice for a peep at a newspaper. It is for this reason, I presume, that every American newspaper is more or less a magazine.