Quotes About Culture

Cos'è il buon senso… oggi, nel Ventesimo secolo, in qualunque epoca? L'aderenza a una norma. Il conformarsi a certe convenzioni di base che regolano l'intera condotta umana. Nella nostra epoca, l'allontanarsi della norma è diventata la norma. L'incapacità di conformarsi è diventato il modello del conformismo.

Learning another cuisine is like learning a language. In the beginning, you know nothing about its most basic rules of grammar. You experience it as a flood of words, or dishes, without system or structure.

What we eat is an essential part of who we are and how we define ourselves.

Think, for a moment, of the words we use to describe some of the textures most adored by Chinese gourmets: gristly, slithery, slimy, squelchy, crunchy, gloopy. For Westerners they evoke disturbing thoughts of bodily emissions, used handkerchiefs, abattoirs, squashed amphibians, wet feet in wellington boots, or the flinching shock of fingering a slug when you are picking lettuce

Are you afraid of chilli heat?' (Ni pa bu pa la?) is the customary warning for travellers on their way to Sichuan.

a passionate appreciation of food was respectable, even desirable, in the traditional scholar-gentleman.

university textbooks I'd encountered in my few weeks of class were deathly dull and totally impractical. Instead of introducing us to useful words like 'stir-fry' and 'braise', 'bamboo shoot' and 'quail', they had required us to learn by rote long lists of largely irrelevant Chinese characters:

Sichuanese dialect is like Mandarin put through a mangle. So the Mandarin 'sh' becomes 's', vowels are stretched out like warm toffee, there are pirate-like rolling 'r' sounds at the end of sentences, and no one can tell the difference between 'n' and 'l' or 'f' and 'h' (the province of Hunan, for example, is known in Sichuan, helpfully, as 'Fulan').

The Church knows too that to marry the present age and its spirit is to become a widow in the next.

People are turning away from Christianity today not because it is too hard but because it is too soft.

La palabra mestizaje significa mezclar las lágrimas con la sangre que corre. ¿Qué puede esperarse de semejante brebaje?.

The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.

Vananenud raamatutest oma lastele raamatukogu rajamist saab õigustada ainult samamoodi, nagu õigustatakse varemete säilitamist: arheoloogiaga.

Ver la cultura como una conversación nos ayuda a centrarnos en términos finitos: quiénes pueden decir algo de interés para quiénes, y cómo, dónde, cuándo, reunirlos. Nos ayuda a aceptar que, en todo el ancho mundo, las personas que van a leer un nuevo libro son tan pocas que hasta se pudiera hacer una lista.

Tanned skin was also unacceptable, particularly in the South. "Remember…not to go out without your bonnet because it will make you very ugly and then we should not love you so much," wrote Thomas Jefferson, demonstrating once again that he could always find just the wrong thing to say to a devoted daughter.

Unlike Rivera and the other muralists, who painted a monolithic hegemonic national narrative, Kahlo visually articulated a multidimensional Mexican past.

It was Kahlo's responses to the experiences of her life, rather than the experiences themselves, combined with her rare talent for articulating them visually and giving meaning to them that distinguish Kahlo as a towering cultural figure.

Driving in Chicago wins over New York; people are so fast. It's almost like there's a subliminal street racing culture here. They drive like comic book characters.

Players want to go where the team wins and where the team has a great culture, ownership and all of that. It doesn't matter where you are. It really doesn't matter, you have to perform and you have to win.

I was born in the U.S., and that's who I rep. Although when the winter Olympics come around, I'm pretty partial to Norway's success and what they do.

I go to Spain a lot, in winter, for a blast of sunlight to banish the blues brought on by the Irish greys and drizzle. I love the cities of the Spanish interior.

In my book 'The Winter Sea,' set north of Aberdeen, I couldn't just ignore the fact some people there - especially the people in the past - would speak the Doric.

There is no winter break, and I think that is the most evil thing of this culture. It is not good for English football. It is not good for the clubs or the national team, and I think you should change it.

There are four seasons in Iran, so you can go winter skiing, you can go in summer to the beach... it's not a real tourism place, but it's a nice country if you have family and friends to visit there.