Cultural Wisdom Quotes

A deep meaning resides in old customs.

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.

The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'

There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads 'He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End'.

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.

Where can we find greater structural clarity than in the wooden buildings of the old. Where else can we find such unity of material, construction and form? Here the wisdom of whole generations is stored. What feelings for material and what power of expression there is in these buildings! What warmth and beauty they have! They seem to be echoes of old songs.

Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.

We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.

India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.

The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.

The aboriginal peoples of Australia illustrate the conflict between technology and the natural world succinctly, by asking, 'What will you do when the clever men destroy your water?' That, in truth, is what the world is coming to.

It shapes my reality, where I was born, in two ways. One, I was burdened by the culture I was born in. And secondly, it gave me a context with which to actually see with wise eyes as well. So culture is both a burden as well as an opportunity for us to look at the world through eyes of wisdom.

Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other's souls and foster mutual understanding.

The shaman is a person who is able to transcend the dimensional confines of cultural existence. They know more than the people they serve. The people they serve are like children within the game of culture. Only the shaman knows that culture is a game. Everyone else takes it seriously. That's how he can do his magic.

The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.

So often among so-called "primitives" one comes across spiritual personalities who immediately inspire respect, as though they were the fully matured products of an undisturbed fate.

I think a lot of what I was taught, gathered, and learned is worth keeping. Heritage and "wisdom" and simply personal family and local history enrich the one able to tap such information. As it is I wish I had garnered more from my grandparents and parents.