Quotes About Culture

and Germans are obsessed with shit.

at the University of Ottawa in Canada, a yoga teacher was shamed into suspending her class, "because yoga originally comes from India." She offered to retitle the course "Mindful Stretching.

When Harriet was growing up, women were trying to immolate gender stereotypes. These days, you preserved the stereotype, the better not to correspond to it.

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing -- he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.

The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is.

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.

Run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.

The Tabernacle provides a pattern for us to feel deeply human, and by engaging with it, we turn our attention away from the culture that devalues us and instead fixes our attention on the God who dignifies each of us.

Every day, we pay lip service to democratic values and then again and again make undemocratic choices in the marketplace. Bestsellers are bestsellers because we buy them: nothing more.

We don't put much stock in genealogy where I'm from [...] It's assumed that you're kind of a loser if you have to sink to boasting about your family in order to impress people.

I'm mesmerized by the way he speaks—New Orleans is pronounced N'awlins. When he says backyard, it's backyaaad. It's the kind of voice that makes you feel instantly at home, like you're a close friend or part of the inner circle. —SINGLE-MINDED

Laughter is a salve. It's the best medicine around. Poet Pablo Neruda called it "the language of the soul." I know this to be a universal truth because I've seen this play out in every culture around the world. People find respite and release in laughter.

Rome We stopped for lunch at a sidewalk café. Like the Italians, we started with an antipasto (appetizer) of grilled vegetables. I also ordered gnocchi (small potato dumplings), cacciucco (fish stew), and for dessert, torta di ricotta (cheesecake). Everything was delicious! Our waiter told us that each of Italy's 20 regions has its own specialty dishes. And I thought pizza and pasta were Italy's main foods!

Weaponry, trips to the sun country, tiny bathing suits, For Christmas. "Nothing says Peace on Earth like guns and string bikinis.

All that air," you repeated. "You are funny." "No. I'm just Irish.

Mathilde. She was French. Quite pretty. We kissed

And there were breasts absolutely everywhere — hoisted high in push-up bras, tamed and contoured under tight tops in T-shirt bras, firm and unfettered inside tiny dresses. And nearly all paired with minuscule bottoms and tiny taut waists. . . . was having a fabulous pair of breasts a prerequisite in this city? Do they hand them out at Oxford Circus?

Ghost?" St. Vincent shot him an incredulous glance. "Christ. You're not serious, are you?" "I'm a Gypsy," Cam replied matter-of-factly. "Of course I believe in ghosts." "Only half Gypsy. Which led me to assume that the rest of you was at least marginally sane and rational." "The other half is Irish," Cam said a touch apologetically. "Christ," St. Vincent said again, shaking his head as he strode away.

The purpose of society is to prevent natural behavior.

I'm from North Wales, where we express ourselves by throwing rocks at trees.