#Culture Quotes

“Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.”

“Literature is a comprehensive essence of the intellectual life of a nation.”

“If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.”

“A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.”

“Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.”

“In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.”

“Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.”

“Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.”

“England produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them.”

“We go to Europe to be Americanized.”

“Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books.”

“The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,--these, and the wish to serve,--to add somewhat to the well-being of men.”

“What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.”

“London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.”

“No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share.”

“In America and Europe, the nomadism is of trade and curiosity.”

“A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.”

“Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.”

“Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political status of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is ever a romance of history in all dynasties--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb.”

“In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.”

“The English never draw a line without blurring it.”

“Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.”

“A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.”

“We make our buildings, and then our buildings make and shape us.”

“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”

“To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the masterworks and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople: to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories.”

“Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.”

“It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.”

“Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation”

“Everyone has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.”

“Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel.”

“Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that such a possibility was thousands of years in the future. Some people may still have some difficulty with the idea, but that's a major cultural meme shift.”

“The arts are essen­tial to any com­plete national life. The State owes it to itself to sus­tain and encour­age them. [...] Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

“We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.”

“Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.”

“In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.”

“We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument, to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone.”

“The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.”

“America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.”

“America is a country of young men.”

“A love of tradition has never weakened a nation.”

“We shape our homes and then our homes shape us.”

“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”

“Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.”

“The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need.”

“The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman.”

“If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.”

“The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.”

“The highest end of government is the culture of men.”

“Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.”