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).
Frances TrollopeThe 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.
Frances TrollopeIt 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.
Frances TrollopeTo an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.
Frances TrollopeI very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.
Frances TrollopeI 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.
Frances Trollope