It is rarely [Americans] dine in society, except in taverns and boarding-houses. Then they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and in total silence.

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.

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.

The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

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

I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians.... Were it not for the churches,... Ithink there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them.