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. . . CULTURE/D see: "EDUCATION" see: "GROWING" see: "REFINED" see: "TASTE" see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere. --St. Ambrose (c. 339397) French-born bishop of Milan. Advice to St. Augustine, in Jeremy Taylor _Ductor Dubitantium_, 1, 1, 5 [1660] [Culture is] to know the best that has been said and thought in the world. --Matthew Arnold (18221888) English Victorian poet and literary and social critic. Quoted in "The Missouri Dental Journal" [January 1881]. A man's nature, runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ [1625] "Of Nature in Men" We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not cultivate it; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato. --Henry Ward Beecher (18131887) American Congregational minister; brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher. _Royal Truths_ [1862] In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year [1992] were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide. --William J. Bennett (b. 1943) American poiltician and author. Quoted in Larry F. Sternberg _Why Jews Should Not Be Liberals_ [2006]. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. --Ray Bradbury (b. 1920) American science fiction author. Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [1994]. I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention and labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a great poet. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (16941773) British writer and politician. Letter to His Son [9 October 1746]. Music rises from the human heart. When the emotions are touched, they are expressed in sounds, and when the sounds take definite forms, we have music. Therefore the music of a peaceful and prosperous country is quiet and joyous, and the government is orderly; the music of a country in turmoil shows dissatisfaction and anger, and the government is chaotic; and the music of a destroyed country shows sorrow and remembrance of the past and the people are distressed. Thus we see music and government are directly connected with one another. --Confucius (551479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. _On Music_ As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _American Way_ [March 1975] - I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better. This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. --Charles Darwin (18091882) English naturalist. _Autobiography_ (ed. Francis Darwin) [1887] - The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie. --Agnes de Mille (19051993) American dancer and choreographer, In _New York Times Magazine_ [11 May 1975]. - If yesterday's rock was the music of abandon, today's is that of abandonment. The odd truth about contemporary teenage music the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers. [...] To put this perhaps unexpected point more broadly, during the same years in which progressive-minded and politically correct adults have been excoriating Ozzie and Harriet as an artifact of 1950s-style oppression, many millions of American teenagers have enshrined a new generation of music idols whose shared generational signature in song after song is to rage about what not having had a nuclear family has done to them. This is quite a fascinating puzzle of the times. The self-perceived emotional damage scrawled large across contemporary music may not be statistically quantifiable, but it is nonetheless among the most striking of all the unanticipated consequences of our home-alone world. --Mary Eberstadt American author. "Eminem Is Right" in _Policy Review_ [December 2004]. - 'Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine stump. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Society and Solitude_ [1870] "Civilization" Is there a culture where there is corporal punishment delinquency. . . where female circumcision is practiced, where mixed marriages are forbidden and polygamy authorized? Multi-culturalism requires that we respect all these practices. . . In a world that has lost its transcendental significance, cultural identity serves to sanction those barbarous traditions which God is no longer in a position to endorse. Fanaticism is indefensible when it appeals to heaven, but beyond reproach when it is grounded in antiquity and cultural distinctiveness. --Alain Finkielkraut (b. 1949) French philosopher and essayist. _The Undoing of Thought_ [1988] No society can survive, no civilization can survive, with 12-year-olds having babies, with 15-year-olds killing each other, with 17-year-olds dying of AIDS, with 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't read. --Newt Gingrich (b. 1943) American politician. Speech in Washington, D.C. [5 December 1994]. There is no effectual way of improving the institutions of any people but by enlightening their understandings. --William Godwin (17561836) English social philosopher and political journalist. _An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness_ [1793] One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_ (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), bk. 5, ch. I [17951796] I don't despair about the cultural scene in Australia because there isn't one to despair about. --Sir Robert Helpmann (19091986) Australian ballet dancer. Quoted in Jonathan Aitken _Land of Fortune : A Study of the New Australia_, p. 189 [1971]. When I hear the word 'culture' . . . I release the safety-catch of my Browning! --Hanns Johst (18901978) German playwright. _Schlageter_, I, i [1933] All of us confront limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization. We are bound by the culture we have in common, the culture which distinquishes us from other people in other times and places. Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives. --Jeane Kirkpatrick (19262006) American Conservative political scientist, professor, author, and the first woman to serve as the American Ambassador to the United Nations. In a commencement address at Georgetown University [24 May 1981]. When Abraham Lincoln was murdered The one thing that interested Matthew Arnold Was that the assassin Shouted in Latin As he lept on the stage. This convinced Matthew That there was still hope for America. --Christopher Morley (18901957) American journalist, novelist, and poet. _Points of View_, l. I [1923] [Upon being challenged to use the word 'horticulture' in a sentence:] You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. --Dorothy Parker (18931967) American critic and humorist. Quoted in _The Algonquin Wits_ (ed.) Robert E. Drennan [1968]. To be completely candid, I think most movies nowadays are trash, and many strike me as unhealthy. The explicit sex, pointless violence, and crude language appeal only to our lowest instincts. They have taken away our idealism, our sense of fun and joy. It's chic to be cynical and tear our heroes down. What has happened to us? And what are we doing to our young people? --Nancy Reagan nθe Davis (b. 1923) Wife of President Ronald Reagan. _Nancy_ [1980] As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind, without cultivation, can never produce good fruit. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. 65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. Hugh Moore _A Dictionary of Quotations from Various Authors in Ancient and Modern Languages_, p. 428 [1831]. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn (19182008) Russian novelist. "The Exhausted West," commencement address at Harvard University [8 June 1978]. In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. --Orson Welles (19151985) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. "The Third Man" [1949 film] (Words added by Welles to Graham Geene's script - ODTQ.) - From Tom Wolfe _Hooking Up_ [2000] : . . . Did any of the America-at-century's-end network TV specials strike the exuberant note that Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee struck in 1897? All I remember are voice-overs saying that for better or worse. . . hmm, hmm . . . McCarthyism, racism, Vietnam, right-wing militias, Oklahoma City, Heaven's Gate, Dr. Death. . . on balance, hmm, we're not entirely sure. . . for better or worse, America had won the cold war. . . hmm, hmm, hmm, . . . [Wolfe's ellipsis] My impression was that one American century rolled into another with all the pomp and circumstance of a mouse pad. America's great triumph inspired all the patriotism and pride (or, if you'd rather, chauvinism), all the yearning for glory and empire (or, if you'd rather, the spirit of Manifest Destiny), all the martial jubilee of a mouse click. Such was my impression; but it was only that, my impression. So I drew upon the University of Michigan's fabled public-opinion survey resources. They sent me the results of four studies, each approaching the matter from a different angle. Chauvinism? The spirit of Manifest Destiny? According to one survey, 74 percent of Americans don't want the United States to intervene abroad unless in cooperation with other nations, presumably so that we won't get all the blame. Excitement? Americans have no strong feelings about their country's supremacy one way or the other. They are lacking in affect, as the clinical psychologists say. There were seers who saw this coming even at the unabashedly pompous peak (June 22) of England's 1897 Jubilee. One of them was Rudyard Kipling, the empire's de facto poet laureate, who wrote a poem for the Jubilee, "Recessional," warning: "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!" He and many others had the uneasy feeling that the foundations of European civilization were already shifting beneath their feet, a feeling indicated by the much used adjectival compound fin-de-siecle. Literally, of course, it meant nothing more than "end-of-the-century," but it connoted something modern, baffling, and troubling in Europe. Both Nietzsche and Marx did their greatest work seeking to explain the mystery. Both used the term "decadence." But if there was decadence, what was decaying? Religious faith and moral codes that had been in place since time was, said Nietzsche, who in 1882 made the most famous statement in modern philosophy "God is dead" and three startlingly accurate predictions for the twentieth century. He even estimated when they would begin to come true: about 1915. (1) The faith men formerly invested in God they would now invest in barbaric 'brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non-brothers.' Their names turned out, in due course, to be the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. (2) There would be 'wars such as been never waged on earth.' Their names turned out to be World War I and World War II. (3) There no longer would be Truth but, rather, "truth" in quotation marks, depending upon which concoction of eternal verities the modern barbarian found most useful at any given moment. The result would be universal skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt. World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918. On cue, as if Nietzsche were still alive to direct the drama, an entirely new figure, with an entirely new name, arose in Europe: that embodiment of skepticism, cynacism, irony, and contempt, the Intellectual. - ----- autochthonous [aw-TOK-thuh-nuhs], adjective: 1. Aboriginal; indigenous; native. 2. Formed or originating in the place where found. cosmopolite (noun) [kahz-'mah-pκ-lIt] A citizen of the world, a person endowed in many cultures; (Ecology) a species found in many parts of the world. desuetude [DES-wih-tood, -tyood], noun: The cessation of use; discontinuance of practice or custom; disuse. Ex.: Probably only one in a hundred girls who give birth clandestinely even knows that an edict of King Henry II, now fallen into desuetude, once made their action punishable by death. --Nina Rattner Gelbart, _The King's Midwife_ pandemic (adj.) [pζn-'de-mik] Widespread; occurring throughout all or almost all of a population. zeitgeist (noun) ['tsahyt-gahyst] The spirit of the time, trend of an era.  ;void(0)) CULTURAL DIFFERENCES . . see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for related links It is good to know something of the customs of different peoples in order to judge more sanely of our own, and not to think that everything of a fashion not ours is absurd and contrary to reason, as do those who have seen nothing. --Renι Descartes (15961650) French philosopher and mathematician. _Discours de la mιthode_ [1637] (Discourse on Method), pt. 1 - Three hundred thousand people welcomed us to Adelaide. It was like a heroes' welcome. . . We came in from the airport it was the same in Liverpool for the premiere of A Hard Day's Night, with the whole city center full of people and the crowds were lining the route and we were giving them the thumbs up. And then we went to the Adelaide town hall with the Lord Mayor there, and gave the thumbs up again. In Liverpool it was OK, because everyone understands the thumbs up but in Australia it's a dirty sign. --Paul McCartney (b. 1942) English pop singer and songwriter. In _The Beatles Anthology_ [2000], "Australia". - The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men. --Frances Wright [Fanny Wright] (17951852) Scottish-born American social reformer. _Views of Society and Manners in America_ [1821] ----- syncretic [sin-KRET-ik; sing-], adjective: Uniting and blending together different systems, as of philosophy, morals, or religion. . . see: "HEALTH" for related links An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. --"The American Remembrancer" [1795] Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels diseases, softens every pain, Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague. --Dr. John Armstrong (17091779) Scottish poet. _The Art of Preserving Health_, bk. IV "The Passions" [1744] - The remedy is worse than the disease. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ "Of Seditions and Troubles" [1625] Cure the disease and kill the patient. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ "Of Friendship" [1625] - The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that's laughable is vanity. --attributed to Henri Bergson (18591941) French philosopher. One ov the best temporary cures for pride and affektashun that i have ever seen tried iz sea sickness; a man who wants tew vomit never puts on airs. --Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (18181885) American humorist. _Josh Billings' Wit and Humor_ [1874] "Ods and Ens" The best of remedies is a beefsteak Against sea-sickness; try it, sir, before You sneer, and I assure you this is true; For I have found it answer--so may you. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. _Don Juan_, canto II, st. xiii [1819] Absence, that common cure of love. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. "Don Quixote de la Mancha" pt I, bk. 3, ch. 10 [1605] [Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloan) speaking:] Old age. It's the only disease . . . that you don't look forward to being cured of. --"Citizen Kane" [1941] Screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is. --attributed to Norman Cousins (19151990) American publisher. To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self. --Joan Didion (b. 1934) American journalist and novelist. "Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?", _Vogue_ [June 1961]. A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. --Irish proverb Some remedies are worse than the disease itself. --Publilius Syrus (8543 B.C.) Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave. _Maxims_, # 301 [On feeling the edge of the axe prior to his execution:] 'Tis a sharp remedy, but a sure one for all ills. --Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 15521618) English explorer and courtier. In D. Hume _History of Great Britain_ [1754]. - It is part of the cure to wish to be cured. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. "Hippolytus" Time often heals what reason cannot. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. "Agamemnon" - For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm. --Edwin Way Teale (18991980) American naturalist, writer, and photographer. _Circle of the Seasons_ [1953] Our society is afflicted with the scourge of AIDS and other diseases that owe their origin to promiscuity. Yet the cry is not, "How can we stop promiscuity?" but rather, "How can we cure AIDS?" --Terry Virgo (b. 1940) English bible teacher and author. _Men Of Destiny_ [1987] "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn" It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw. --cartoon caption by Bill_Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist, creator of "Calvin and Hobbes." - The physician will carefully prepare a mixture of crocodile dung, lizard flesh, bat's blood and camel's spit ... --From a papyrus listing 811 prescriptions used by the Egyptians in 1550 B.C.. - A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the leaves of a frond fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo looked him in the eye and said, 'Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?' ----- ameliorate [uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt], transitive verb: To make better; to improve. anodyne [AN-uh-dyn], adjective: 1. Serving to relieve pain; soothing. 2. Not likely to offend; bland; innocuous. noun: 1. A medicine that relieves pain. 2. Anything that calms, comforts, or soothes disturbed feelings. panacea (noun) [pζ-nκ-'see-κ] A remedy for everything, for all problems or difficulties; a cure-all, a catholicon. The adjective is "panacean," as a panacean remedy or a panacean effect. Etymology: From Latin "panacea," a herb Romans believed could cure all diseases. The word was borrowed from Greek panakeia "universal cure.."  CURIOSITY . . see: "BUSYBODIES" see: "DISCOVERY" see: "MINDING OWN BUSINESS" see: "QUESTIONS" see: "KNOWLEDGE" for other related links The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men. --Samuel Adams (17221803) American revolutionary leader. Letter to James Warren [4 November 1775]. - Pleasure pursues beautiful objects what is agreeable to look at, to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch. But curiosity pursues the contraries of these delights with the motive of seeing what the experiences are like, not with a wish to undergo discomfort, but out of a lust for experimenting and knowing. What pleasure is to be found in looking at a mangled corpse, an experience which evokes revulsion? Yet wherever one is lying, people crowd around to be made sad and to turn pale. --Augustine, St. of Hippo (354430) Christian theologian and bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa [396-430]. _Confessiones_ c. 400 (The Confessions), bk. X, # 35 - He that questioneth much shall learn much and content much; but especially if he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh. For he shall give them occasion to please themselves in speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge. But let his questions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a poser; and let him be sure to leave other men their turn to speak. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ [1625] "Of Discourse" Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance? --Frank Moore Colby (18651925) American essayist and professor. _The Colby Essays_, vol. I [1926] Your curiosity Runs open-mouth'd, ravenous as winter wolf. I dare not stand in its way. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _Osorio_, act 3 [1797] There is philosophy in the remark that every man has in his own life follies enough, in the performance of his duty deficiencies enough, in his own mind trouble enough, without being curious after the affairs of others. --Charles Dibdin (17451814) British actor and dramatist. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 184 [10th ed. 1884]. The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. "Journal" [18 August 1830] The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. --Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (18441924) French novelist, man of letters, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. _Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard_ (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard) [1881] Willie saw some dynamite, Couldn't understand it quite; Curiosity never pays. It rained Willie seven days. --Harry Graham (18741936) British writer and journalist. _Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899] A penny for your thought. --John Heywood (14971580) English playwright. _Proverbs_ [1546] - Shun the inquisitive person, for he is also a talker. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Epistles_ I, 18, 69 & note: Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest him. --Johann Kaspar Lavater (17411801) Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics. Attributed in John Timbs _Laconics: Or, The Best Words of the Best Authors_, p. 326 [1829]. - Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. "Rambler" #103 (English twice-weekly journal 1750-1752) There are various sorts of curiosity; one is from interest, which makes us desire to know what may be useful to us; another is from pride, and arises from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Maxims_ [1665] Curiosity killed the cat. --"L.A. Times" [22 August 1901] The search for truth is more precious than its possession. --Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (17291781) German dramatist. Attributed in _Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association_, vols. 46-47 [1907]. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. --attributed to both Ellen Parr & Dorothy Parker. One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. Attributed in Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 53 [1908 ed.]. Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory. --Richard Whately (17871863) English philosopher and theologian. "On the Acquisition of Knowledge" [May 1814] - A father and son went fishing one day. After a couple hours in the boat, the boy suddenly became curious about the world around him. He asked his father, "How does this boat float?" The father thought for a moment, then replied, "Don't rightly know, son." The boy returned to his contemplation, then turned back to his father, "How do fish breathe underwater?" Once again the father replied, "Don't rightly know, son." A little later the boy asked his father, "Why is the sky blue?" Again, the father replied. "Don't rightly know, son." Worried he was going to annoy his father, he says, "Dad, do you mind my asking you all of these questions?" "Of course not, son. If you don't ask questions, you'll never learn anything!" - ----- quidnunc [KWID-nuhngk], noun: One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody. . . ^ Fred Allen (18941956), American comedian, writer, and radio star. If somebody caught him in an act of kindness, he ducked behind a screen of cynicism. A friend was walking with him when a truck bore down on a newsboy in front of them. Allen dashed out and snatched the boy to safety, then snarled at him, 'What's the matter, kid? Don't you want to grow up and have troubles?'' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ [Patrick Garland, of his friend Rex Harrison]: I often received wonderfully abusive postcards. There was one from Australia, where he was on tour with a Freddie Lonsdale comedy, with pictures of curious Antipodean marsupials, koalas, wombats, kangaroos, platypi, all looking extremely odd. 'You think these are peculiar,' he had scrawled, 'wait until you see the people.' --in _The Best After-Dinner Stories_ Selected and introduced by Tim Heald [2003]. ^ ^ Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974) American film producer. Goldwyn was not given to flights of (uncalculated) sentiment. He and some colleagues, visiting him at his home, were once engaged in a bitter dispute over a script. One of them walked over to the window looking out on Goldwyn's luxurious lawn. He stood there for a moment, then called out to the others, 'Come look. Here we are fighting, and this marvelous, peaceful event is taking place in nature right under our noses. We should be ashamed of ourselves.' The others, Goldwyn last, trooped over. Parading across the lawn were a mother quail and her five little chicks. They stood there for a short time; then the silence was broken by the unappeasable Goldwyn: 'They don't belong here.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ There is entirely too much charm around and something must be done to stop it. --Dorothy Parker (18931967) American critic and humorist. 'These Much Too Charming People' in _The New Yorker_ [1928]. Practically everyone but myself is a pusillanimous son of a bitch. --George S. Patton, Jr. (18851945) American general. Letter to Lt. Col. Charles R. Codman [18 October 1945]. I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas in these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous, and demoralising subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish dramatist and critic. In a review of the play "The Babes in the Wood" [27 December 1897]. ----- smellfungus (noun) ['smel-fκng-κs] A curmudgeon who finds fault in everything; someone who loves misery. Smellfungi (pl.) are generally bitter people addicted to themselves. . . see: "SUPERNATURAL", "SUPERSTITION" May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. --Arab curse May the grass wither from thy feet; the woods Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust A grave! the sun his light! and heaven her God! --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. _Cain_, III, i [1821] May those who love us love us. And those that don't love us, May God turn their hearts, And if He doesn't turn their hearts, May he turn their ankles, So we'll know them by their limping. --Irish curse - May you inherit a hotel with 1,000 rooms- and may you drop dead in each of them. --Jewish curse May all your teeth fall out, save one; and may it have a permanent tooth ache. --Jewish curse May you have a million dollars and spend it all on doctors! --Jewish curse May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground. --Jewish curse May all your troubles be little ones, and may they never stop growing. --Jewish curse - May your soul be forever tormented by fire and your bones be dug up by dogs and dragged through the streets of Minneapolis. --Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American writer and radio host. Quoted in Robert Byrne _1911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said_ [1988]. Oh! I will curse thee till thy frighted soul Runs mad with horror. --Nathaniel Lee (c.16531692) English dramatist. _Caesar Borgia_ [1680] . . . For decades, the Cubs have labored to erase the curse of the Billy Goat. According to legend, the curse was placed on the team after a fan was refused entry to a 1945 World Series game at Wrigley Field because he tried to bring his goat along with him. --Ron Lieber "How One Man Went From Regular Fan To a Cubs Legend" _The Wall Street Journal_ [16 October 2003] I shall curse you with book and bell and candle. --Sir Thomas Malory (c. 14201471) English writer. _Le Morte d'Arthur_ [1469=1470] (The reference is to the cere-mony of excommunication, performed since the eighth century with bell, book, and candle.) Curses, foiled again. --"Moon Mullins' (comic strip) in _Chicago Daily Tribune_ [9 January 1930]. May your balls turn square and fester at the corners! --Scottish curse - May never glorious sun reflex his beams Upon the country where you make abode! But darkness and the gloomy shade of death Environ you, till mischief and despair Drive you to break your necks, or hang yourselves. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Henry VI_, pt. 1, V, iv [1592] A plague o' both your houses. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i [1595] The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon! Where gott'st thou that goose look? --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Macbeth_, V, iii [1606] A pox o' your throat! You bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog! --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _The Tempest_, I, i [16111612] - Wisdom is a curse when wisdom does nothing for the man who has it. --Sophocles (496?406 B.C.) Greek dramatist. _Oedipus the King_ [c. 429 B.C.] - For him that stealeth a book from this library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck by palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease for his agony until he sinks into dissolution. Let book-worms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of hell consume him for ever and aye. --Warning displayed in the library of the Popish Monestary of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain. Quoted in _Old Librarians Almanack_ [1773]. ----- anathema [uh-NATH-uh-muh], noun: 1. A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, and accompanied by excommunication. Hence: Denunciation of anything as accursed. 2. An imprecation; a curse; a malediction. 3. Any person or thing anathematized, or cursed by ecclesiastical authority. 4. Any person or thing that is intensely disliked. imprecation [im-prih-KAY-shuhn], noun: 1. The act of imprecating, or invoking evil upon someone. 2. A curse. malediction [mal-uh-DIK-shun], noun: A curse or execration. . . see: "OBSCENITY" see: "PROFANITY" see: "SWEARING" see: "COMMUNICATION" for related links The day of the jewelled epigram is passed and, whether one likes it or not, one is moving into the stern puritanical era of the four-letter word. --Noλl Annan (19162000) English historian and writer. In the House of Lords [1966]; quoted in George Greenfield _Scribblers for Bread_ [1989]. Gentlemen, there comes a tide in the affairs of bastards when no amount of cursing will suffice. Let us merely observe a moment of silence, like a deaf-mute who has just hit his fingers with a hammer. --John Barrymore [John Sidney Blythe] (18821942) Shakespearean actor. Quoted in Gene Fowler, _Good Night, Sweet Prince_ [1943] I've labored long and hard for bread For honor and for riches But on my corns too long you've tred, You fine-haired sons of bitches. --Charles E. Bolton [Charles Earl Bolles, aka Black Bart] (18291917?) American outlaw. In a note he left after robbing a Wells Fargo stagecoach; first three lines quoted in Marshall Cushing _The Story of our Post Office_ [1893]. Bullshit! --Mel Brooks (b. 1926) American actor, writer, and director. Reply to Playboy interviewer who commented "You have been accused of vulgarity," in Maurice Yacowar _The Comic Art of Mel Brooks_ [1981]. Today words and phrases are encountered everywhere on the screen, in the theaters, in the comic papers, in the newspapers, on the floors of Congress, and even at the domestic hearth that were reserved for use in saloons and bagnios a generation ago. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. _The American Language_ [pub. 1919; from 1960 ed.] -- ^ A grandfather, always made a special effort with his grandchildren. Many Sunday mornings he would take his 7-year old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some bonding time. One particular Sunday however, he had a bad cold and he really didn't feel like being up at all. Luckily, grandma came to the rescue and said that she would take the grandchild out. When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see Pop Pop. 'Well,' the grandfather asked, 'did you enjoy your ride with Nana? ' 'Oh yes, Pop Pop' the girl replied, 'and do you know what? We didn't see a single dumb bastard or lousy shit head!' ^ ----- tarnation (interjection) Damnation: used to express anger and annoyance (regional) [Late 18th century. Alteration of darnation (formed from darn) or damnation.] . . see: "CAPITALISM" for related links [On the Model T Ford, 1909:] Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black. --Henry Ford (18631947) American car manufacturer. _My Life and Work_ ch. 2 [1922] Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread rule 1. --Stew Leonard American merchant. Policy of Stew Leonard's dairy stores. Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them. ... If we treat our employees correctly, they'll treat the customers right. And if the customers are treated right, they'll come back. --attributed to J. W. Marriott, Jr., (b. 1932) Chairman, Marriott Corp. There is only one boss: the customer, and he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. --Sam Walton (19181992) Founder of Wal-Mart Stores. Quoted in Jim Meisenheimer _47 Ways to Sell Smarter_ [1994]. ----- lagniappe (noun) [lahn-'yahp] A gratuity given by a merchant to a customer beyond the value of a purchase; a bonus or additional benefit of any sort. . . see: "CONFORMITY" see: "HABIT" see: "TRADITION" There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted. --Christian Nestell Bovee (18201904) American writer. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 110 [10th ed. 1884]. [O tempora! O mores!] Oh, the times! Oh, the customs! --Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 BC) Roman orator and statesman. _In Catilinam_, Speech I, ch. I [63 BC] To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes is easier than to think. --William Cowper (17311800) English poet and hymnodist. "Tirocinium" [1784] The custom and fashion of to-day will be the awkwardness and outrage of to-morrow. So arbitrary are these transient laws. --Alexandre Dumas (18021870) French novelist and dramatist. Attributed in James Comper Gray _The Biblical Museum: Old Testament_, vol. 3 of 8 [1878 ed.]. The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_, ch. III [1859] The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (15331592) French moralist and essayist. _Essais_ (Essays) [pub. 15801588] "Of Custom and Law" . . see: "MISANTHROPY" see: "PESSIMISM" see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes openly bad and secretly bad. All virtue and generosity and disinterestedness are merely the appearance of good; but selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man does a good thing except for profit. The effect of his conversation upon your feelings is to chill and sear them; to send you away sour and morose. His criticisms and hints fall indiscriminately upon every lovely thing, like frost upon flowers. --Henry Ward Beecher (18131887) American Congregational minister; [brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher]. _Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit_ [1870] Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. --attributed to George Carlin (19372008) American stand-up comedian and author. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs. --Kenneth Clark (19031983) British author, museum director, broadcaster, and art historian. _Civilisation: A Personal View_ [1970] A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Society and Solitude_ [1870] "Success" Only the stoical and the cynical can preserve a measure of stability; yet stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom. So none escapes. --Bergen Evans (19041978) American lexicographer and educator. _The Natural History of Nonsense_ [1945] Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack. --Harry Emerson Fosdick (18791969) Baptist minister and Pastor of Riverside Church in NYC. _On Being a Real Person_ [1943] You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. --Mohandas K. Gandhi (18691948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule. Letter to Amrit Kaur [29 August 1947]. Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief, for a cynical community is a corrupt community. --John W. Gardner (19122002) American administrator. "Can We Count on More Dedicated People?" in _LIFE_ (mag.) [13 June 1960]. The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. --Josι Ortega y Gasset (18831955) Spanish philosopher. Attributed in "Forbes", vol. 142 [1988]. It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to. --Fannie Hurst (18891968) American novelist and dramatist. _ A President Is Born_ [1928] We must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain. --Walter Savage Landor (17751864) English poet. _Imaginary Conversations_ [18241853] "Barrow and Newton" Cynicism - the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. --Russell Lynes (19101991) American art critic. Attributed in Robert I. Fitzhenry (ed.) _The Harper Book of Quotations_, [3rd ed., 1993]. Cynics are only happy in making the world as barren for others as they have made it for themselves. --George Meredith (18281909) English novelist and poet. Attributed in Sidney Greenberg _A Treasury of the Art of Living_ [1963]. Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. --Peggy Noonan (b. 1950) Speechwriter for U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Quoted in Jon Winokur _The Big Curmudgeon_ [2007]. To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. --Jules Henri Poincarι (18541912) French mathematician and philosopher of science. _Science and Hypothsis_ [1903], author's preface Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _Letter to Fortescue_ [23 September 1725] There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last. --Jules Renard (18641910) French novelist and dramatist. Attributed in "Defense Management Journal", vol. 10, issue 5 [1974] ... that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish dramatist and critic. In Hesketh Pearson _George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality_ [1942]. A cynic, a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. _Lady Windermere's Fan_, act III [1892] ----- jaundice (noun) [1. The illness] 2. cynical state of mind: an attitude that is characterized by cynical hostility, resentment, or suspicion. end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CANADA | CANCER - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLEVER | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRUPTION - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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