Quotes About Culture

here" was the garden of the Musée Rodin, in Paris,

Cézanne. Riopelle and Lemieux. Kenojuak Ashevak.

Gens du Pays. The separatist anthem,

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.

in Cambodia people don't outright compliment a child. They don't want to call attention to the child. It is believed that evil spirits easily get jealous when they hear a child being complimented, and they may come and take away the child to the other world.

Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals -- for all that is admirable in man is the artificial product of special breeding.

Good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and whose finer details are different for every race and culture.

So far as English versification is concerned, Pope was the world, and all the world was Pope.

Never eat Mexican food east of Mississippi or north of Dallas.

It's the people who make a place. Always. Without the right spirit, buildings are empty shells of nothing.

Nationality, then, is only a less narrow form of provincialism, a sublimer sort of clownishness and ill-manners.

Not very long ago, the whole world smoked, no room was truly furnished unless it contained an ashtray, and all of waking life was measured out in cigarettes.

Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through.

more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations...the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality" -luce irigaray

I am only astonished that, while so many women have intelligent things to say and so many men are still unknown, a publisher cared to print such a little book, and at such a price. That confirms what Schopenhauer reveals to us, among other truths: philosophy is a matter of death. A philosopher living and thinking life is a priori suspect in our philosophical culture.

Our [western] culture cuts us off from our natural roots, instead of contributing toward the cultivation of the natural beings we are. This tradition has, in this way, rendered us extraneous to our environment, extraneous to one another as living beings, en even extraneous to ourselves.

Most American women are very uncomfortable about having servants. They don't know what to do while you are there.

Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept.

Only Americans smile all the time.

La soledad es un concepto anglosajón. En Ciudad de México, si eres el único pasajero en un autobús y alguien sube, no solo se sentará a tu lado sino que se recostará en ti. (Del cuento Triste idiota)

Often they wore their hair in pin curls and a turban, getting their hair ready for—what? This still is an American custom. You see women everywhere in pink hair rollers. It's some sort of philosophical or fashion statement. Maybe there will be something better, later.

Miksi muka on hienostunutta olla ikävystynyt? Tyylikkäillä matkailijoilla ja teatterissa kävijöillä on usein sama tuskastunut, ikävystymisestä kielivä ilme. Miksei voisi sanoa: "Ai matka? Miten jännittävää! Suurenmoinen näytelmä!

Opera once was an important social instrument -- especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.

Dice il professore che l'umanità si divide in quelli che si fanno la doccia e in quelli che si fanno il bagno.