Cultural Sophistication Quotes

The people of Northern Italy are the most civilized people I have ever met.

The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language.

Difference between savage and civilized man: one is painted, the other gilded.

The arts shows that you're civilized, and it makes life sweet. So you can exist and you can buy more things and you can be more - we're dealing with a form of commercialism that obscures a prior relationship to quality, and it's a national problem.

That only can with propriety be styled refinement which, by strengthening the intellect, purifies the manners.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air?

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

I'm very proud of myself on my, whatever the literacy is, I'm pretentious, totally pretentious. I like to say 'hmm', for example.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

We know the degree of refinement in people by the matter they laugh at and the ring of the laugh.

When I became a man, I put away childish things and got more elaborate and expensive childish things from France and Japan.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.

Be aroused by poetry; structure yourself with propriety, refine yourself with music.

Even in early adulthood, men can't be told what to wear; they can only be subtly moved by example, encouragement, and a generally sophisticated atmosphere.

I think Hong Kong's ballet audience is very sophisticated in the sense that they are able to find the beauty in good performances.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keef out of it.

France is the most civilized country in the world and doesn’t care who knows it.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

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.

Israel's a small country but both the audience and programme-makers are very sophisticated.

Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.