Quotes About Culture

My dear boy, said Lord Henry, smiling, anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.

The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.

I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities," said Virginia satirically.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves.  The Greeks were quite right there.  Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.  Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. 

It is personalities, not principles, that move the age

Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

I never talk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.

There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.

The youth of America is their oldest tradition.

The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about the public.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

The art of living. The only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times.

Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

Hoy en día la gente conoce el precio de todo y el valor de nada.

it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.  More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

Culture and corruption, echoed Dorian. I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

Ya sabes que nosotros, los pobres artistas, tenemos que aparecer en sociedad de cuando en cuando para recordar al público que no somos salvajes.

There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.

People nowadays are so absolutely superficial that they don't understand the philosophy of the superficial.

Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry. Except in America, rejoined Lord Henry, languidly.