Quotes About Culture

or with the nails, in the manner of dogs or cats, and not with a napkin, but with a toothpick of mastic wood, or with a feather, or with small bones taken from the drumsticks of cocks or hens." —Erasmus, "On Good Manners for Boys

The bath, except for medical reasons when absolutely necessary, is not only superfluous, but very prejudicial to men," the French doctor Théophraste Renaudot warned in 1655. "Bathing fills the head with vapors. It is the enemy of the nerves and ligaments, which it loosens, in such a way that many a man never suffers from gout except after bathing.

The English word loo for toilet may come from 1) lieu à l'anglaise, the French term for toilet, or 2) Gardez l'eau! (Watch out for the water!), called to alert passersby that chamber pots were being emptied from upper-story windows into the street.

since the royal body was the most precious body in the kingdom, and hence deserved the greatest protection from the dangerous assault of water, it is possible that James I of England and Philip V of Spain were dirtier than some of their subjects.

When the middle and upper classes feared water, roughly from the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century, they washed as little as peasants or the urban poor.

Since washing the body happened so seldom, it ceased to be a subject for painters. In place of the medieval woodcuts and illuminated manuscripts that pictured warmly sensuous bathhouse scenes came painterly odes to linen.

decade ago, the editorial writers at a large Canadian newspaper were amused when the germ-conscious editor-in-chief urged them to write an editorial against shaking hands. (He suggested crossing your arms and nodding instead.) The editorial never appeared. It's doubtful that the editor's suggestion would strike them as outlandish or exaggerated today.

By the 1880s, however, something happened that no one could have predicted. The United States-rising, pushing and still raw in many ways—had become the Western country that most embraced the gospel of hygiene.

Pictures and words don't hurt anyone, except for those who are afraid of history.

The whole sweet tea thing had to be genetic. Or an acquired taste she hadn't developed yet.

Going to the Upper East Side is like taking a trek to the Himalayas practically.

You can't sneeze in Dublin without somebody saying 'God bless you' in Kerry.

Tradition is not a childish and outmoded mythology but a science that is terribly real. (...la tradition n'est pas une mythologie puérile et désuète, mais une science terriblement réelle.)

Si a priori l'Occident a besoin de l'Orient traditionnel, celui-ci a besoin a posteriori de l'Occident qui a été à son école. "Sur les traces de la religion pérenne

Me ha parecido que la exhibición de las máscaras estaba destinada a una sola persona, mi suegra, no porque ella frecuente el teatro Noh o porque sea capaz de apreciar la calidad artística de las máscaras, sino por esa expresión de absoluta serenidad que tienen, esa especie de mirada dirigida hacia dentro. Creo que ella debe de ser una de las últimas mujeres japonesas que todavían viven así, dirigiendo hacia dentro sus energías más profundas.

History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is the human spirit.

Homeland of patience, land of the Russian people.

He realized that the ritualized world he had dismissed as feminine was in fact civilization.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.

He felt people at IBM worshiped hierarchies. Each employee worried about his little piece of turf and nothing else. Diamond still recalled with amazement the time an IBM programmer, hacking away at OS/2, watched the program crash to a halt. The guy studied his screen for a minute, then said, "Wow, what a nasty problem. Glad that isn't in my code." He restarted his PC and went back to work, never even reporting the bug. At

It doesn't matter where you're from - or how you feel... There's always peace in a strong cup of coffee.

I don't think we're living in great times for movies, to tell you the truth.