“Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries, perhaps, they might be more fitly called,) and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering — and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes — let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world’s improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice, in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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