"If you can't say something nice... about an overrated, ungrateful European nation that would have been wiped off the face of the earth twice in the twentieth century if it weren't for the United States and which has given nothing to the culture in the past two hundred years but whine and cheese, both of which are made better in California, then don't say anything at all!"

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If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

— Henry David Thoreau