Foreign Customs Quotes

What images do we see from the rest of the world? We see natural disasters, war, terror. We see refugees, and we see horrible diseases. Right? We see beautiful beaches, cute animals, beautiful nature, cultural rites and stuff. And then we're supposed to make the connection in our head and create a worldview out of this. And how is that possible?

Many travelers get into trouble in places like Dubai by assuming that it is sufficiently Western for them to drink as they do back home. But elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is quite controlled, and the non-Muslim will be steered down a fairly narrow path.

There is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs as the Persians.

I had an amazing experience in Cuba. People there are fantastic. But I do have to say it's very nice to be back home in front of all of you capitalist pigs.

Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.

I found it curious that people kept animals for companionship and not food. When I'd asked Mama Oaks when she planned to cook the fat creature that slept in a basket in the kitchen, her eyes almost popped out of her head. Since then, she'd kept her pet away from me, like she suspected I meant to turn it into stew. Clearly, I had a lot to learn.

Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all, of the quietness and purity of English domestic life.

I got so used to using chopsticks that using a fork and knife is weird.

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

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.

In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home.

A long flight. Jetlag. Immigration. Customs. And then finally, that first step into a new place, that moment of exhilaration and disorientation, each feeding the other. That moment when anything can happen

The Americans, of course, are quite dotty with hospitality.

One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.

They were a strange and mercantile people, these Americans. One never knew what they might come up with next.

Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside.