Quotes About Culture

I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it would probably be unrecognizable as a family to anybody in one of these big, loose, enveloping Hmong clans. You almost need an electron microscope to study the modern Western family these days.

There's something about a white gown - setting aside the obnoxious question of virginity - that signals to a man that this day is not like any other day. It shows him that he's been chosen. It means a lot to men, I have learned over the years, to see their brides walking toward them in white. Helps to quiet their insecurities. And you'd be surprised how insecure the men can be.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We

Then he asked me to tell him some stories about India, about America, about Italy, about my family. That's when I realized that I am not Ketut Liyer's English teacher, nor am I exactly his theological student, but I am the merest and simplest of pleasures for this old medicine man- I am his company. I'm somebody he can talk to because he enjoys hearing about the world and he hasn't had much of a chance to see it.

A man can't help where he's born. A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don't make 'em biscuits.

the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest.

and in this shallow world a pretty face means everything.

viajar compensa qualquer custo ou sacrifício.

The bright red sap of the fei plant is meant to be useful for blood ailments." "The signature of all things," Alma murmured.

Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most poeple who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be - that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.

The way the Balinese see it, God takes what belongs to God—the gesture—while man takes what belongs to man—the food itself.)

Franza o Spagna, purchè se magna," which means, in dialect, "France or Spain, as long as I can eat.

Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto

word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!")

In India, just so you know, May 3 is National Broken Hearts Day. And in Papua New Guinea, there exists a tribe whose men write mournful love songs called namai, which tell the tragic stories of marriages which never came to pass but should have.

For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante's Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that—from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare.

But let me explain my culture of origin to you, Angela, in case you have never been around White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. You need to understand that we have only one central rule of engagement, and here it is: This matter must never be spoken of again. We WASPS can apply this rule to anything -- from a moment of awkwardness at the dinner table to a relative's suicide. Asking no further questions is the song of my people.

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.

I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We are all the chosen few.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying

A sad-faced Russian woman tells us she's treating herself to Italian lessons because I think I deserve something beautiful.

My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, What are your songs about? He replied, Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse.

Fear had a tendency to drive away the courtesy of civilization.