the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.
Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.