Quotes About Culture

What Jews do you know who don't make comedy of their lives? It's part of the religion. I'll bet you think all that Hebrew at bar mitzvahs is prayers, don't you? Fooled you, didn't we? It's stand-up.

As far as I'm concerned the last good man went when Elvis died.

It was a lot easier when we could just brand'em, Ben said. Then everybody'd know not to mess with our womenfolk.

Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin. I'm Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture.

Toronto Sydney New Delhi

It wasn't just the money, it was the polish that the money had given her, the cities she'd visited, the plays and the art she'd seen.

Disapproval always depends on other people - dead people, foreigners - doing the unacceptable action.

and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say 'vanquish'.

If you are Pakistani or Indian you might just as well commit suicide when the team is humiliated; if you're West Indian, you might feel the world has fallen apart when things go wrong at the Oval. But these are countries where cricket is one of the leading suppliers of national pride. In England, you don't support cricket teams, you follow them. It's the game you support, not the team.

But to most of the English, their history is just that, history. The contrast is with Scotland or Ireland, where every self-respecting adult considers themselves to belong to an unbroken tradition stretching back to the wearing of woad: oppressed peoples remember their history.

The moment a Frenchman opens his mouth, he declares his identity. The French speak French. The English speak a language which belongs to no one.

The British version of 'Shit My Dad Says' is really entertaining.

One cannot be free from the stresses of a speed- and size-obsessed culture, until you are free from the materialistic addictions, time-famine mindset, and comparative impulses that created it in the first place.

Where's your kilt? How about this, he said in a low voice. You don't ask me about haggis and bagpipes, and I won't ask you about garlic and Goodfellas.

New York Times writer Louis Sass put it this way: Each culture probably needs its own scapegoats as expressions of society's ills. Just as the hysterics of Freud's day exemplified the sexual repression of that era, the borderline, whose identity is split into many pieces, represents the fracturing of stable units in our society.2 Though

There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want to talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter where— anywhere.

nothing excuses violence of language and coarseness of expression, especially in a man who has been carefully brought up

They took him to Wagner festivals and Burne-Jones's private views. They read him all the minor poets. They booked seats for him at all Ibsen's plays. They introduced him into all the most soulful circles of artistic society. His days were one long feast of other people's enjoyments.

The charge I myself should bring against the German people is that of over indulgence in patriotism. Out of it have grown most of their follies.

O inglês típico, sabemos pelo velho cronista Froissart, aprecia seus prazeres com angústia; já a mulher inglesa vai um passo além: é na própria angústia que busca o prazer.

The Pygmies also deplored as superstitious nonsense the Negroes' magico-religious figurines and other so-called fetishes. They would take an equally dim view of churchly huts adorned with doll-like statues of Jesus and Mary. This would be regarded as idol worship by the Ituri Forest Pygmies, who believe that the divine power of the universe cannot be confined within material bounds.

Accents don't show up in music.

Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her.

His accent was coarse, pure backcountry Minnesotan. If he had to string together more than five words, we'd hear the "I seen it" and "can you borrow me some" that my parents said were the signs of ignorance