Carolina QuotesI believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me — and I think for all of us — not only our own hope, but America's everlasting, living dream. I think the life which we have fashioned in America, and which has fashioned us — the forms we made, the cells that grew, the honeycomb that was created — was self-destructive in its nature, and must be destroyed. I think these forms are dying, and must die, just as I know that America and the people in it are deathless, undiscovered, and immortal, and must live.
Thomas Wolfe Carolinian
Source
Book VII, Ch. 48: Credo
- work
- You Can't Go Home Again (1940)
- year
- 1940
Cite this record
“I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we…” Thomas Wolfe. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-E0F84026B7. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/e0f84026b7
More from Thomas Wolfe
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America--that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
His enemy was time. Or perhaps it was his friend. One never knows for sure.
So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him — this, seeker, is the promise of America.