Quotes About Culture

I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.

Only peril can bring the French together. One can't impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.

How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?

How can one conceive of a one party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese.

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheeses

How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six varieties of cheese?

But the animal has no veil. Dogs better treated than Afghan women. (Même l'animal n'a de voile. Chien mieux traité que l'afghane ?)

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." ( Frauds on the Fairies , 1853)

I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.

Mr. Cruncher... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

On this matter I'm inclined to agree with the French, who gaze upon any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners.

The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as one of the most interesting in America: and with good reason.

Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets, your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!' The

May I ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking, down in your part of the country, that the children of not exactly suitable marriages, are always most particularly anxious to be married?

Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race will ever understand.

There was no religious ceremony connected with marriage among us, while on the other hand the relation between man and woman was regarded as in itself mysterious and holy.

We never were separate from nature and never will be, but the dominant culture on earth has long imagined itself to be apart from nature and destined one day to transcend it. We have lived in a mythology of separation.

Certainly this is what many people feel during empty moments or deliberate experiments at meditation: a churning unease that says "I should be doing something". This cultural compulsion is so strong that even spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer are easily converted into just another thing to do, moments mortgaged to the campaign of improving life.

A knowledge of Greek thought and life, and of the arts in which the Greeks expressed their thought and sentiment, is essential to high culture. A man may know everything else, but without this knowledge he remains ignorant of the best intellectual and moral achievements of his own race.

Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.

The French are the greatest cuckolds to be found in the world. There is unquestionably less cuckoldry in Germany.