No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens.

The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.
If great writers have not at present existed in America, the reason is very simply given in these facts; there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America.

The Inquisition has never been able to prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain.

The empire of the majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it actually removes the wish of publishing them.

Unbelievers are to be met with in America, but, to say the truth, there is no public organ of infidelity.
Attempts have been made by some governments to protect the morality of nations by prohibiting licentious books.