"The huge new houses, up and down, looked over their smart, short lawns as with a certain familiar prominence in their profiles, which was borne out by the accent, loud, assertive, yet benevolent withal, with which they confessed to their extreme expensiveness. "Oh, yes; we were awfully dear, for what we are and for what we do" — it was proud, but it was rather rueful; with the odd appearance everywhere as of florid creations waiting, a little bewilderingly, for their justification, waiting for the next clause in the sequence, waiting in short for life, for time, for interest, for character, for identity itself to come to them, quite as large spread tables or superfluous shops may wait for guests and customers."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. I: New England - An Autumn Impression, pt. I (p. 8)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_American_Scene
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"The ample villas, in their full dress, planted each on its little square of brightly-green carpet, and as with their …"
"That, at any rate, would seem in each instance the most direct message of the life displayed to the observer, on the …"
"What was taking place was a perpetual repudiation of the past, so far as there had been a past to repudiate, so far a…"
"Crowned not only with no history, but with no credible possibility of time for history, and consecrated by no uses sa…"
"The reflecting surfaces, of the ironic, of the epic order, suspended in the New York atmosphere, have yet to show sym…"
"The newness of New York — unlike even that of Boston, I seemed to discern — had this mark of its very own, that it af…"
"The social question quite fills the air, in New York, for any spectator whose impressions at all follow themselves up…"
"These adventures of the critical spirit were such mere mild walks and talks as I almost blush to offer, on this reduc…"
"It had been intimated to me that one of these scenes of our climax had entered the sophisticated phase, that of sacri…"
"He is confronted too often, to his sense, with the question of what may be "borne"; but what does he see about him if…"