What has miserable, inefficient Mexico...to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?

The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.

O the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged - it darts like lightning!

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature.

Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.

O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?

You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.