Quotes About Culture

The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.

One epoch's popular culture is another's esoterica.

Alt?n bir çaÄŸ yaÅŸan?yordu; benzersiz maceralar, zengin yaÅŸam ve zor ölüm devriydi bu . . . ama kimse öyle düÅŸünmüyordu. Servet ve h?rs?zl?kla, yaÄŸma ve çapulculukla, kültür ve ahlaks?zl?kla dolu bir gelecekti bu . . . ama kimse bunu kabul etmiyordu. A??r?l?klar?n ça??yd?, hilkat garibelerinin büyüleyici yüzy?l? . . . ama kimse bundan hoÅŸlanm?yordu.

History is a novel whose author is the people

I don't want to appear disloyal to television, but I think reading will be good for you.

Moreover, every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolve the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.

We do treat books surprisingly lightly in contemporary culture. We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

Because we were Russian, sadness came naturally to us. But so did reading. In my family, a book was a life raft.

Our mother is too well bred to hate,' Franny said. 'She disapproves.

First they burned the books, then the people who wrote them, then those who read them. They burned books about medicine and magic, books in Hebrew and in Spanish and Portuguese.

In his opinion, a woman who loved books was the best sort.

Not to take one's own suffering seriously, to make light of it or even to laugh at it, is considered good manners in our culture.

Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find women glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.

Men. What they do. It's so sick and stupid. You can't believe it.

Detroit Art Institute Museum the

After Basie married his Katie, she became one of the sidditiest of siddity sisters.

father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on the phone, and drank sherry and ate raw meat, in the form of chorizo, at five o'clock. Until the day in the yard with my

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries (museums), and not yourselves, are full.

I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.

Can anything be more boring than an upper-class Englishman?