Quotes About Culture

It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The

books are the society we keep... Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world.

Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

The Anglo-American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological

Le cinéma est le tout-à-l'égout du XXe siècle : quand il y a quelque chose de bas entre deux êtres, cela finit toujours par une salle.

He said They were heartily welcome to his poor cottage, and turning to Mr. Didapper, cried out, 'Non mea renidet in domo lacunar.' The beau answered, He did not understand Welsh; at which the parson stared and made no reply.

La generación actual tiene el priviliegio, que no tuvo ninguna otra, de contar con ese ingente acervo intelectual.

La generación actual tiene el privilegio, que no tuvo ninguna otra, de contar con ese ingente acervo intelectual.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

He was holding his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.

Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers.

I suspect that the age of letters is waning, for our time. It is the age of Panama Canals, of Sandra Bernhardt, of Western wheat raising, of merely material expansion. Art, form, may return, but I doubt I shall live to see them--I don't believe they are as eternal as the poets say.

In American, the gentlemen obey the ladies.

Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians.

It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility. The

I'm perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad. Society is all bad.

Era la hora dedicada a la ceremonia del té de la tarde y sabido es que, en derminadas circusntancias, hay en la vida muy pocas horas que puedan comparrse a ésa por el agrado y atractivo que ofrece a quines saben disfrutarla

The English are the most romantic people in the world.

Oh they're every one—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are always artists—he's beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrère; and then gros bonnets of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above

In Paris such debts are tacit.