Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate. The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility --a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it --so that the pleasure of hating --one's self if no better victim offered --was not its rarest amusement; but the charm was a true and natural child of the soil, not a cultivated weed of the ancients.
The Education of Henry Adams
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