Frances Trollope Quotes

#1. There is less alms-giving in America than in any other Christian country on the face of the globe. It is not in the temper of the people either to give or to receive.

Frances Trollope

#2. Situated on an island which I think it will one day cover, it rises like Venice from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.

Frances Trollope

#3. It is rarely [Americans] dine in society, except in taverns and boarding-houses. Then they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and in total silence ...

Frances Trollope

#4. I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies).

Frances Trollope

#5. The Yankee: In acuteness and perseverance, he resembles the Scotch. In frugal
neatness, he resembles the Dutch. But in truth, a Yankee is nothing else on earth
but himself.

Frances Trollope

#6. The American spring is by no means so agreeable as the American autumn; both move with faltering step, and slow; but this lingering pace, which is delicious in autumn, is most tormenting in the spring.

Frances Trollope

#7. I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians ... Were it not for the churches, ... Ithink there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them.

Frances Trollope

#8. [On New York City:] Were all America like this fair city, and all, no, only a small proportion of its population like the friends we left there, I should say that the land was the fairest in the world.

Frances Trollope

#9. To an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.

Frances Trollope

#10. It was not very unusual at Washington for a lady to take the arm of a gentleman, who was neither her husband, her father, norher brother. This remarkable relaxation of American decorum has been probably introduced by the foreign legations.

Frances Trollope

#11. When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.

Frances Trollope

#12. I draw from life - but I always pulp my acquaintance before serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage.

Frances Trollope

#13. I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.

Frances Trollope

#14. Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement.

Frances Trollope

#15. It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs.

Frances Trollope

#16. The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

Frances Trollope

#17. All the freedom enjoyed in America, beyond what is enjoyed in England, is enjoyed solely by the disorderly at the expense of the orderly ...

Frances Trollope