It would be a gross misunderstanding of my attitude to America if any European person supposed I under-rated all the good I've got from my life over here. It infuriates me to listen to ignorant, irresponsible, "summer-butterflies" traducing America! They know as little about the platonic "essences" of this extraordinary land as they do about Russia, with which it has so much in common.
I would like to record here and now, on the eve of my return - if the gods are propitious - to my native land, that at least one European, if an Englishman is a European, feels that he owes more, in the matter of his inmost spiritual growth, to America, than to all the cathedrals and all the castles, and all the writers too - except Homer and Dostoievsky - of the historic Old World.
(Autobiography.)
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