"These adventures of the critical spirit were such mere mild walks and talks as I almost blush to offer, on this reduced scale, as matter of history; but I draw courage from the remembrance that history is never, in any rich sense, the immediate crudity of what "happens," but the much finer complexity of what we read into it and think of in connection with it."
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Ch. 4: New York - Social Notes, pt. IV (p. 182)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_American_Scene
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