Quotes About Culture

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from Disappearance of Literature

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can show off and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times.

At noon I observed a bevy of nude young native women bathing in the sea, and I went and sat down on there clothes to keep them from being stolen.

I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.

The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires.

The Jabalites .... They worship no god; and if we in goodness of heart do send a missionary to show them the way of life, they listen with respect to all he hath to say, and then they eat him. This doth tend to hinder the spread of light.

Un clásico es un libro que todos alaban y nadie lee

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.

I am a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man.

In this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.)

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue (German) ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think? I wouldn' think nuffn; I'd take en bust him over de head—dat

There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

Almost every convert runs the risk of catching our civilization... I compassionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!

The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. - The Spirit of Tennessee Journalism

A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once—not oftener.

A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their sincerity.

Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.