Quotes About Culture

La violencia no basta para destruir una civilización. Cada civilización muere de la indiferencia ante los valores peculiares que la fundan.

When he repudiates rites, man reduces himself to an animal that copulates and eats.

Marxism and psychoanalysis have been the two traps of the modern intelligence.

Ce siècle sombre lentement dans un marécage de sperme et de merde. Lorsqu'il traitera des événements actuels, le futur historien devra enfiler des gants.

Civilization is what is born when the soul does not surrender to its congenital vulgarity.

The technification of the world blunts one's sensibility and does not refine one's senses.

Die moderne Literatur: dieses kolossale reaktionäre Unterfangen.

Modern literature: this colossal reactionary enterprise.

The West withers every non-Western soul that touches it.

Vulgarity consists, basically, in being on first name terms with Plato or Goethe.

Der Wille eines Volkes, seine genetische Zusammensetzung "rein" zu erhalten, kann eine Anmaßung sein, doch es ist keine Dummheit; denn gibt es auch keine reinen Rassen, so gibt es doch gelungene Mischungen.

This century has succeeded in turning sex into a trivial activity and an odious topic.

When one is confronted by diverse "cultures," there are two symmetrically erroneous attitudes: to admit only one cultural standard, and to grant all standards the same rank. Neither the overweening imperialism of the European historian of yesterday, nor the shameful relativism of the European historian of today.

In a perfect penal code, vulgarity would be punished with the death penalty.

Eroticism and Gnosticism are the individual's recourse against the anonymity of mass society.

By embracing the "modern mentality," Christianity became a doctrine which it is not easy to respect, nor interesting to do so.

Once he settles down in the country he admires, the foreigner bastardizes exactly that which he admires.

Although it grieves the angelism of the democrat: one cannot build a civilisation with miserable biological material.

The cultural standard of an intelligent people sinks as its standard of living rises.

It is possible to inculcate in the contemporary bourgeois any stupid idea in the name of progress and to sell him any grotesque object in the name of art.

Die nationalistische Xenophobie bewahrt die Unversehrtheit köstlicher Speisen für die, die weder Nationalisten noch xenophob sind.

Tu viente sabe más que tu cabeza y tanto como tus muslos. Ésa es la fuerte gracia negra de tu cuerpo desnudo. Signo de selva el tuyo, con tus collares rojos, tus brazaletes de oro curvo, y ese caimán oscuro nadando en el Zambeze de tus ojos.

tertulia inaceptable para la Academia Sueca, siendo que en las últimas décadas para ser galardonado en literatura no importa tanto que el premiado sea talentoso o un idiota, sino que lo gravitante es que sea de izquierda o que al menos sea funcional a ella.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.