In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labour he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness.


Chapter XXIX. - Democracy in America, Volume I (1835) - Chapter XV-IXX

Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just...

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just...

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just...

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just...