cultural essence Quotes

I cannot prevent the French from being French

If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It's a form of aggression.

Cities are like gentlemen, they are born, not made. You are either a city, or you are not, size has nothing to do with it. I bet San Francisco was a city from the very first time it had a dozen settlers. New York is "Yokel", but San Francisco is "City at Heart".

The spirit of a nation is what counts-the look in its eyes.

Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some sort of zoological specimens. Change itself does note destroy a culture. All societies are constantly evolving. Indeed a culture survives when it has enough confidence in its past and enough say in its future to maintain its spirit and essence through all the changes it will inevitably undergo.

Culture is intangible. It's spiritual. You can't buy it.

The Aloha spirit is something that is very special and very meaningful to us and our Polynesian culture. Those of you who have had the opportunity to visit Hawaii, or any of the Polynesian islands, know that it's a very special thing. It's an intangible, and when you get off the plane and have your feet on the ground there, it energetically takes you to a different place.

Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.

There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society.

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.

It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.

We should not forget that the essence of the European culture is freedom. For the European, freedom is a calling from above as truth and freedom are inseparable.

Thousands of years of worshiping power has dealt a mortal wound to Chinese culture. That’s hypocrisy and falsehood. The habit of falsehood is fatal to a culture. But to us, falsehood is the essence.

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.

Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with its essence.

The film 'Slumdog Millionaire' portrays the spirit you feel in India. For those who haven't been there, the film says it all.

No one can take culture seriously if he believes that it is only the uppermost of several layers of epiphenomena resting on a primary reality of economic activity.

I think the material that inspires artists is the fabric of the soul of civilization.