Mark Twain Quotes

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

China was not at all what I expected it to be. I had an image of China as a very quaint and mysterious and peaceful place. Well, it's quaint and mysterious in some respects, but not in the ways I had thought. The people are mysterious. They don't often tell you what they feel.

Going to the U.A.E. for the first time was a real cultural shock. Everything was different. People didn't speak my language, it was all new, a huge change. But I loved it.

Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

Always when you go to a new country and they teach you bad words, you just say them without knowing the value and people look at you because you didn't know that value of them.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Americans know as much about Canada as straight people do about gays. Americans arrive at the border with skis in July, and straight people think that being gay is just a phase. A very long phase.

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.

China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.

Foreigners are not like the people I am used to here.

I'm very comfortable in the U.S. and Europe, but I feel completely out of place in the rest of the world, mostly because I never spent time outside the U.S. and Europe until I was in my 30s.

If I had not been coached well about how to deal with a culture and a set of values that were foreign to my own, I would not have been able to be successful.

I felt like the Germans were being mean to me at training, but they were actually just trying to help. I learned really quick - which made me a better player. I'm appreciative of the way they treated me. It's just the language and, of course, as an American, I had to learn that. No offense to them; I love them to death, and I love my teammates.

I am very happy and satisfied with my first year in Italy.

I have a lot of traditional values I follow personally, which was hard to deal with when I first moved to L.A.

Moving to France is not the hard part. Living here is more difficult. Of course there are many benefits but it's not always easy especially if you don't speak the language.

When I moved from Canada to Korea, I experienced a massive culture shock. I wasn't familiar with Korean culture at all and was very surprised at the hierarchical elements of Korean culture. However, at the time I was determined to succeed so I became a sponge and just soaked in everything I could.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Going to the Far East was my first eye-opener to a world vastly different from my own. Then when I was 16 I lived in Paris for a year and studied mime. At 21 I went to Indonesia. I had planned to go for three months, but I stayed four years. I just got lost in the culture.

I was in Las Vegas when the Nogueira brothers first touched down in America. There was a bus, this is a true story. There was a bus that pulled up to a red light, and Little Nog tried to feed it a carrot, while Big Nog was petting it. He thought it was a horse. This really happened. He tried to feed a bus a carrot, and now you're telling me this country has computers? I didn't know that.

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

I don't hold with abroad and think that foreigners speak English when our backs are turned.