[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular pro… - Alexis de Tocqueville

For the first time in sixty years, the priests, the old aristocracy and the people met in a common sentiment—a feeling of revenge, it is true, and not of affection; but even that is a great thing in politics, where a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.

When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.

Our life is like to dice, which ever fall
In varying combinations; no one form
Has man's existence, but 'tis full of change.