The ideal American type is perfectly expressed
by the Protestant, individualist,
anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in
the process of disappearing. In reality there
are few left.
-- Orson Welles
1915-1985,
American Film Maker
I
despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such
whining sallow women, such utter absence of the
amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass
landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole
nation to be developing without the sense of
beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.
-- Edith Wharton
1862-1937,
American Author
A
man is not expected to love his country, lest he
make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen
through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable,
in somewhat the way an individual who has got
himself into an unconscionable scrape seems
lovable -- or at least deserving of support.
-- E
lwyn) B(rooks)
White (1899-1985, American Author, Editor
Their manners, speech, dress, friendships, --
the freshness and candor of their physiognomy --
the picturesque looseness of their carriage --
their deathless attachment to freedom -- their
aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean
-- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens
of one state by the citizens of all other states
-- the fierceness of their roused resentment --
their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their
self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their
susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have
of persons who never knew how it felt to stand
in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of
their speech -- their delight in music, a sure
symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance
of soul -- their good temper and open-handedness
-- the terrible significance of their elections,
the President's taking off his hat to them, not
they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It
awaits the gigantic and generous treatment
worthy of it.
-- Walt Whitman
1819-1892,
American Poet
