Monday ~ March 4, 2019

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened people placed in the happiest of circumstances that the world affords. Yet it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. In the United States, people build houses in which to spend their old age, and they sell them before the roof is on; they plant gardens and sublet them just as the trees are coming into bearing; they bring fields into tillage and leave others to gather the crops; they embrace a profession and give it up; they settle in a place, which they soon afterwards leave to carry their changeable longings elsewhere.... They who have set their hearts exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare are always in a hurry, for they have but a limited time at their disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.

(Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)