Nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think a great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state?
Or a prepared constitution?
Or the best built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron?
Or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?
Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.
A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
-Walt Whitman
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