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Exlpore more Culture quotes
"We are what we think about and meditate on. Look around people! America is a buffet of violence, a total immersion."
"Culture is a symbolic veil with which we hide our animal nature from ourselves - and other animals."
"Cultural heritage define the uniqueness of individuals. Appreciate cultural diversity."
"The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy."
"Confession. Years ago, I was invited to a cocktail party for an Asian-American networking group. As I introduced myself to a Japanese businessman, I reached out and firmly shook his hand. Much to my embarrassment now, I automatically took my other hand and wrapped our hands in a "hand hug. This is a common gesture of friendship in the South. As his wife approached, however, she appeared appalled and felt disrespected that I was touching her husband. Our cultural differences were marked. Despite this cultural mishap, I was able to redeem myself. We all moved past it and delighted in an interesting conversation. Physical touch is a touchy topic (pun intended), especially when various cultures are involved."
"Culture and holiness must be made compatible in the environment of the kingdom."
"The American's literature is all about being hot and sexy, inspiring a girl and going to bed with her. It focuses on being a hero, saving lives and surviving last, but it has nothing to do with dignity, serenity."
"Could dump two Chinee down in one of our maria and they would get rich selling rocks to each other while raising twelve kids. Then a Hindu would sell retail stuff he got from them wholesale--below cost at a fat profit. We got along."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton
"A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don't dare or know how to communicate them to others."
"We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety."
"If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us."
"There is something improbably about the silence in the [subway] carriage, considering how naturally gregarious we are as a species. Still, how much kinder it is for the commuters to pretend to be absorbed in other things, rather than revealing the extent to which they are covertly evaluating, judging, condemning and desiring each other. A few venture a glance here and there, as furtively as birds pecking grain. But only if the train crashed would anyone know for sure who else had been in the carriage, what small parts of the nation's economy had been innocuously seated across the aisle just before the impact: employees of hotels, government ministries, plastic-surgery clinics, fruit nurseries and greetings-card companies."
"Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment."
"For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations....Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle."
"The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did."
"The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it-just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her."
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