Quotes About Culture

Every day I practice yoga, read poetry, and translate. What do I need politics for?

That the strength of Europe and of its culture, in contrast to other cultures, lies in its bent for criticism, above all, for self-criticism—in its art of analysis and inquiry, in its endless seeking, in its restlessness.

Así, mis viajes cobraron una segunda dimensión: viajé simultáneamente en el tiempo a la Grecia antigua, a Persia, a la tierra de los escitas) y en el espacio (mi labor cotidiana en Africa, en Asia, en América Latina). El pasado se incorporaba al presente, confluyendo los dos tiempos en el ininterrumpido flujo de la historia

W rzeczywistoÅ›ci piÄ™kno jest trudne i do tworzenia, i pó?niej do przyjmowania. Sztuka jest bardzo arystokratyczna. Kultura mo?e by? masowa, sztuka mo?e by? tylko arystokratyczna, bo wymaga du?ego wysiÅ'ku ze strony odbiorcy.

Le lingue europee sono ricche solo finché si tratta di descrivere la propria cultura, di rappresentare il proprio mondo: appena si addentrano nelle culture altrui e cercano di parlarne, rivelano subito i loro limiti, la loro povertà, la loro inadeguatezza semantica.

Aki meg akarja érteni Afrikát, az olvasson Shakespeare-t.

To understand our world, we must use a revolving globe and look at the earth from various vantage points. If we do so, we will see that the Atlantic is but a bridge linking the colorful, tropical Afro-Latin American world, whose strong ethnic and cultural bonds have been preserved to this day. For a Cuban who arrives in Angola, neither the climate, nor the landscape, nor the food are strange. For a Brazilian, even the language is the same.

Whiteness is often associated with finality, with the end, with death. In those cultures in which people live with the fear of death, mourners dress in black, to scare death away from themselves, isolate it, confine it to the deceased. But here, where death is regarded as another form, another shape of existence, mourners dress in white and dress the deceased in white: whiteness is here the color of acceptance, consent, of a surrender to fate.

So what do you talk about?' I asked. One of them replied: 'This and that.' On this basis I could not deduce whether these conversations are interesting or boring, because I do not possess the Egyptological talent that can derive the stormy history of a dynasty from a single hieroglyph

Lo sradicamento dalla propria cultura costa caro. Per questo è così importante avere chiaro il senso della propria identità, della sua forza e del suo valore. Solo allora l'uomo può liberamente confrontarsi con una cultura diversa. In caso contrario si chiuderà nella sua tana, isolandosi timorosamente dagli altri.

there's always something in miso soup

But why is it that if you imagine a baby who stinks to high heaven. But why is it that if you imagine a baby smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such agreement about the world what is or isn't foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow, they'd urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they's get an urge to kill it?

The Irish 'peasant' is the child of time. He is its guardian and its slave. He will preserve for centuries dull and foolish habits that those who neither love nor fear time or change will quickly cast aside; but he will also preserve dear, ancient habits that like wine and ivory grow more beautiful and precious with age, all jumbled with the useless lumber in that dusty cockloft which is his ancestral mind.

Just think what it means to live in a Christian state, a Christian nation, where everything is Christian, and we are all Christians, where, however a man twists and turns, he sees nothing but Christianity and Christendom, the truth and witnesses to the truth –

Qué es entonces la cultura? Yo siempre la he considerado como el camino que ha de recorrer un individuo para llegar al conocimiento de sí mismo; y muy poco le servirá a quien no quiera emprender ese itinerario el haber nacido en la más ilustrada de las épocas.

Once we overcome our biases about the past, we will realize that the people we see as primitive have a lot to teach us, that looking back can help us to move forward.

We create our gods based on the stage of development we are at in matters of ethics, morals and spirituality.

That's what the British do, you know. They accommodate, and then they assimilate. It's very effective. It's their way of disarming the opposition, and it works.

The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.

Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

You'll say things all wrong but they'll at once become American ways of saying things. You won't know shit but it'll right away become an American type of ignorance. Not belonging, that's an old American tradition, see?, that's the American way.

How far did they fly? Five and a half thousand as the crow. Or: from Indianness to Englishness, an immeasurable distance. Or, not very far at all, because they rose from one great city, fell to another. The distance between cities is always small; a villager, travelling a hundred miles to town, traverses emptier, darker, more terrifying space.

I, however, was raised neither as Catholic nor as Jew. I was both, and nothing: a jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a stewpot, a mongrel cur. I was--what's the word these days?--atomised. Yessir: a real Bombay mix.

She dreamed of him, his face, filling the dream. Things are ending, he told her. This civilization; things are closing in on it. It has been quite a culture, brilliant and foul, cannibal and Christian, the glory of the world. We should celebrate it while we can; until night falls. She didn't agree, not even in the dream, but she knew, as she dreamed, that there was no point telling him now.