Quotes About Culture

In the South of Spain, one could look to vice as quickly as to virtue for a sense of tradition.

The inability to understand the spiritual roots of gluttony (as the inability to sacrifice) or to appreciate a culture's role in fostering this anxious condition, makes it all the more difficult for individuals to find the help and direction they need.

If the experience of delight presupposes a sustained, patient, sympathetic, and affectionate embrace of the world, then the decline of delight will be preceded by the erosion of the practical conditions that make such an embrace possible. What trends and practices in culture work to undermine a loving regard for creatures and things, and how have these trends and practices contributed to a situation in which relatively few people bow their heads before raising their forks?

Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status.

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

Mythological thinking cannot be superseded, because it forms the framework and context for all thinking

The dumbing down of America is proceeding apace.

Incarnación Felipe de la Cruz y Monte Piedras

We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre.

Give me," says Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don't find any.

When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

Si la soledad del mexicano es la de las aguas estancadas, la del norteamericano es la del espejo. Hemos dejado de ser fuentes.

I do not condemn the cult of pleasure; I lament the general vulgarity.

There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot.

And it is significant that a country as sorrowful as ours should have so many and such joyous fiestas. Their frequency, their brilliance and excitement, the enthusiasm with which we take part, all suggest that without them we would explode.

El mexicano no quiere ser ni indio, ni español. Tampoco quiere descender de ellos. Los niega. Y no se afirma en tanto que mestizo, sino como abstracción: es un hombre. Se vuelve hijo de la nada. Él empieza en sí mismo.

Al escribir historia me refiero a la general o universal. No hay otra: lo que se llama historia patria es espejo del hombre -y entonces es también universal- o es una anécdota de sobremesa.

Lo que mueve a los mundos es la interacción de las diferencias, sus atracciones y rechazos. La vida es pluralidad. La muerte es uniformidad. Al reprimir diferencias y peculiaridades, al eliminar diferentes culturas y civilizaciones el progreso debilita la vida y fortalece la muerte, nos empobrece y mutila. Cada visión del mundo que se extingue, cada cultura que desaparece, disminuye la posibilidad de vida.

La arquitectura es el testigo insobornable de la historia.

Su curiosidad no es la del hombre de ciencia, sino la del hombre culto que aspira a integrar en una visión coherente todas las particularidades del conocimiento. Presentía oculto engarce entre todas las verdades.

La ilusión de una morada en el tiempo es el deseo de hombres y mujeres. La esperanza y el instante de la felicidad, únicos asideros para vivir esta errancia sin fin. Y la cultura, para muchos, la salvación de toda tragedia: vivir en cualesquiera de los géneros teatrales, pero no vivir muerto.

La historia de México es la del hombre que busca su filiación, su origen.

Credevo (e credo) che una tradizione poetica non si definisca attraverso il concetto politico di nazionalità ma attraverso la lingua e i rapporti che s'intessono tra gli stili e i loro creatori.

But why, he said with animation, do the English not read their own great literature? Victor laughed triumphantly, and said, Because at school they are made to hate it.