I Think Patriotism Is Like Charity --

Make (the Reader) Think The Evil, Make Him Think It For Himself, And You Are Released From Weak Specifications. My Values Are Positively All Blanks, Save So Far As An Excited Horror, A Promoted Pity, A Created Expertness... Proceed To Read Into Them More Or Less Fantastic Figures.

We Must Know, As Much As Possible, In Our Beautiful Art...what We Are Talking About And The Only Way To Know Is To Have Lived And Loved And Cursed And Floundered And Enjoyed And Suffered. I Think I Don't Regret A Single "excess" Of My Responsive Youth I Only Regret, In My Chilled Age, Certain Occasions And Possibilities I Didn't Embrace.

No Sovereign, No Court, No Personal Loyalty, No Aristocracy, No Church, No Clergy, No Army, No Diplomatic Service, No Country Gentlemen, No Palaces, No Castles, Nor Manors, Nor Old Country-houses, Nor Parsonages, Nor Thatched Cottages Nor Ivied Ruins No Cathedrals, Nor Abbeys, Nor Little Norman Churches No Great Universities Nor Public Schools -- No Oxford, Nor Eton, Nor Harrow No Literature, No Novels, No Museums, No Pictures, No Political Society, No Sporting Class -- No Epsom Nor Ascot Some Such List As That Might Be Drawn Up Of The Absent Things In American Life.

To Take What There Is In Life And Use It, Without Waiting Forever In Vain For The Preconceived, To Dig Deep Into The Actual And Get Something Out Of That; This, Doubtless, Is The Right Way To Live.

It Is, I Think, An Indisputable Fact That Americans Are, As Americans, The Most Self-conscious People In The World, And The Most Addicted To The Belief That The Other Nations Of The Earth Are In A Conspiracy To Under Value Them.