Quotes About Culture

We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England.

The gypsies may not have known the language, but there was no mistaking the tone, in whatever tongue the words were spoken.

and a couple of days later he sent Strange a haggis (a sort of Scotch pudding) as a present.

He is Englishness carried to perfection

The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man.

Greece was a long lesson in my insignificance.

Perdute le radici della propria cultura si cerca di rattoppare con le esistenze passate il grigiore e l'incertezza del presente.

A ridiculous oversight I mean to address at the earliest opportunity. Women dress to please men. Why shouldn't men then be in on the process from the beginning?" "Looking attractive pleases oneself," she replied in English. "It is a man's good fortune if the result pleases him, as well.

The study of a language . . . allows its students to hear a people's 'interpretation (or misinterpretation) of messages from environment to human.' The spoken word reveals, upon reflection, that to which its speakers first chose to listen, then ponder, then live by.

As with a child, to commune with Athena demands a level of openness and intuition greater than that used in the usual discourse between adult humans of a common culture.

The Old Way: A Story of the First People

Some villagers understand science simply as a different system of belief. "If you did not believe in science, how would you fly in an airplane?" one elderly fisherman asked me thoughtfully. "Without belief in science, the airplane would fall down.

If America is a melting pot, New Orleans is where it comes to a boil.

Let's order cheap Chinese and eat it out of the box with chopsticks." "Let's order good Chinese and do that.

A pesar de que tiene dos lenguas, el bilingüe habla como si siempre le faltara algo, en permanente estado de necesidad.

Siempre se escribe desde una ausencia: la elección de un idioma automáticamente significa el afantasmamiento del otro pero nunca su desaparición.

Los ejemplos que recuerdo, como se verá, remiten (o re-tornan) a la casa, a la cuchara y a la olla; remiten a lo casero, aunque las lenguas del sujeto bilingüe nunca lo son. La mezcla, el ir y venir, el switching pertenece al dominio de lo unheimliche que es, precisamente, lo que sacude la fundación de la casa.

Quiérase o no, siempre se es bilingüe desde una lengua, aquella en la que uno se aposenta primero, siquiera provisoriamente, aquella en la que uno se reconoce.

The first time I saw a fingerbowl was at the home of my benefactress. [...] The water had a few cherry blossoms in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms.

I think I may well be a Jew.

He could almost have been an American, he was so tan and had such good teeth, but I could tell straight away that he wasn't. He had what no American man I've ever met has had, and that's intuition.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars ...

They understood things of the spirit in Japan. They disembowelled themselves when anything went wrong.

Mrs Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first finger-bowl. The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms. Mrs Guinea never said anything, and it was only much later, when I told a debutant I knew at college about dinner, that I learned what I had done.