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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_ [1660], 1, 1, 5. 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. 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" 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 (1943 ) American poiltician and author. 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, "Eminem Is Right", _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. "Civilization" _Society and Solitude_ [1870] 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 (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 (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] A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. 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. [2 May 1969] When I hear the word 'culture' . . . I release the safety-catch of my Browning! --Hanns Johst (18901978) German playwright. _Schlageter_, Act 1, Scene 1 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]. 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. 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 (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] TOPICAL - Once Footloose, Bangalore Clubs Are Now Dancing-Free To Rein In Western Influence, Indian City Tightens Rules; DJs Lower the Volume By Eric Bellman _the Wall Street Journal_ [November 7, 2005] BANGALORE, India -- On a Saturday night, club owner Amardipta "Deep" Biswas was locked in battle with six policemen in the rain. The cops were blocking people from entering his club after unconfirmed reports that people inside were breaking the law, by dancing. "We've turned down the music and stopped the dancing!" he pleaded to an indifferent deputy commissioner of police lounging in a chauffeured cruiser. "We'll even put on traditional Indian music. Just please let us stay open." Unimpressed, the lawman rolled up a tinted window and waved his driver on. The city fathers of this conservative part of India's Hindu heartland recently dusted off old morality codes that effectively outlaw dancing. The move was a reaction to the rising temperature of the club scene in India's version of Silicon Valley a reflection of the discomfort traditional Indians feel as their young sons and daughters drift toward Western ways and mores. Since it opened 10 months ago, Mr. Biswas's Thailand-themed restaurant and bar "Taika" has been one of Bangalore's hottest clubs. On Saturdays before the new law, the dance floor was packed with more than 500 of Bangalore's brightest engineers, consultants and call-center employees, bouncing to hip-hop and house music from the West. Today, Taika's dance floor which boasts an $80,000 sound system and the biggest sub woofer in India is filled with sofas, chairs and tables, all intended to obstruct would-be dancers. [. . . ] - ----- syncretic [sin-KRET-ik; sing-], adjective: Uniting and blending together different systems, as of philosophy, morals, or religion. Ex.: Indonesia is known for its moderate, syncretic, inclusive brand of Islam. People see no difficulty in worshipping Allah and sea spirits. --Jason Burke, "Paradise lost," _The Observer_ [22 December 2002] . . see "HEALTH" for related links Absence, that common cure of love. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. "Don Quixote de la Mancha" pt I, bk. 3, ch. 10 [16051615] [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. --Norman Cousins (19151990) American publisher. - Kangal, Turkey Tucked between brown hills in central Turkey is a natural hot spring where, for a fee, you can become fish food. Dip in a hand or foot, and within seconds small fish will swarm, bump and nibble it. Stand above the pools, and the fish will gather below, waiting. The scaly swimmers the "Doctor Fish of Kangal" supposedly have curative powers. But in this unusual case of adaptive ecology, the human visitors may be helping the fish more than themselves. These fish have acquired a taste for humans largely because they have little choice. The spring is too hot to sustain enough algae and plankton to feed them all. In the past, the fish were able to move between the spring and a creek that runs nearby. But after learning of a story about a local shepherd whose wounded leg healed after being dipped into the spring in 1917, builders walled off the spring from the creek in the 1950s to preserve a captive school. A Turkish family has now constructed a hotel, villas and a playground and markets the resort to psoriasis patients. Some 3,000 people every year pay for the privilege of sitting in the spring and allowing these omnivores to eat their dead skin, a process that may stimulate new skin growth or relax patients and thereby ease stress-triggered psoriasis. --Matt Mossman _Scientific American Magazine_ [June 2007], "Fish That Go Skin-Deep" - Some remedies are worse than the disease itself. --Publilius Syrus (8543 B.C.) Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave. _Maxims_, # 301. 'Tis a sharp remedy, but a sure one for all ills. --Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 15521618) English explorer and courtier. (On feeling the edge of the axe prior to his execution), 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_ - The media hysteria not only fools the public, it fools government. Regulators throw money at publicized risks billions on Superfund and asbestos removal instead of the riskiest risks. Consider government-funded medical research. You would think the bureaucrats would spend tax dollars on research that would save the most lives or relieve the most suffering. But they don't. The lion's share goes to the activists who make the most noise. In the '80s, when the National Institutes of Health were slow to spend money on AIDS research, activists in Washington, D.C., heckled President Reagan, stopped traffic, marched on Congress, and accused politicians of discriminating against gays. It worked. AIDS now gets more research money per patient than any other disease. But breast cancer and AIDS aren't among the leading killers. Among diseases, breast cancer is ninth, AIDS 18th. Yet in 2001, AIDS research got $4,439 per patient from NIH, breast cancer $290, Parkinson's $175. Diabetes, which killed more people than AIDS and breast cancer combined, got $41. Heart disease, the number one killer, got just $58 per patient. --John Stossel (1947 ) American television journalist and author. _Give Me A Break_ [2005] - It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw. --Bill Waterson II (1958 ) American cartoonist, creator of "Calvin and Hobbes." From the cartoon. - "If Dr. Keeley Could See You Now, You'd Be Headed for 'Jabs'" By Cynthia Crossen December 31, 2007 _The Wall Street Journal_ Dr. Leslie E. Keeley would be appalled by how many people are getting drunk "inebriated," he would say on New Year's Eve. More than a century ago, Dr. Keeley predicted that in the future, "alcohol would be banished from the face of the earth, and drunkenness would be dead." In the late 19th century, Dr. Keeley claimed he had invented a scientific cure for alcoholism with a 95% success rate. His Keeley Institute in the small town of Dwight, Ill., was the Betty Ford Center of the era. At its peak, the institute treated some 700 patients a day, and "gone to Dwight" became shorthand for checking into rehab. He promised his patients that at the end of their four-week treatment, they would not only be sober, they wouldn't be tempted to drink alcohol again. His slogan was, "Drunkenness is a disease, and I can cure it." Dr. Keeley was part visionary, part charlatan, and the combination made him a wealthy man. He franchised his system to more than 100 treatment centers across America and in Canada and England. Five state legislatures in the U.S. agreed to use taxpayers' money to subsidize the $25-a-week cost of treating drunks at Keeley institutes. When Dr. Keeley died in 1900, his estate was valued at $1 million (about $25 million in today's purchasing power). Many physicians publicly scoffed at Dr. Keeley's theory of alcoholism as a physiological disease that could be permanently eradicated with hypodermic injections and oral tonics whose ingredients he refused to disclose. Although he was frequently beseeched to reveal his secret recipes for the sake of dipsomaniacs who couldn't afford his treatment, he refused. "Only three people in the world know the formula," he said in 1892. He would divulge it only "when the medical profession has agreed that it is a cure for drunkenness, such as I claim it is." [...] The media had their skeptics, such as Joseph Medill, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. He and Dr. Keeley made a bet. Mr. Medill would send a half-dozen of Chicago's most inveterate Skid Row drunks to Dwight. If they were cured, Mr. Medill would pay their bills. If not, there would be no charge. Dr. Keeley won. "They went away sots and returned gentlemen," Mr. Medill conceded, giving the Keeley Institute the kind of publicity that can't be bought. But Dr. Keeley also advertised widely in newspapers and magazines, another source of friction between him and the medical profession. [...] Dr. Keeley's cure survived for a few decades after his death in 1900, but without its chief promoter and defender, its popularity waned. Yet, Dr. Keeley played an important role in convincing Americas that alcoholism was a disease, not a sin or a crime. [...] - 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: "INQUISITIVENESS" 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; nay, if there be any that would reign and take up all the time, let them find means to take them off, and bring others on, as musicians used to do with those that dance too long galliards. If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. 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 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. - Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. The search for truth is more precious than its possession. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. - 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. 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] - 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. - 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] A penny for your thought. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory. --Richard Whately (17871863) English philosopher and theologian. _Annotation on Bacon's Essay, "Of Education and Custom"_ ----- 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' _The New Yorker_ [1928] Practically everyone but myself is a pusillanimous son of a bitch. --George S. Patton, Jr. (18851945) American general. 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: in 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 comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Our Theatres in the Nineties_ ----- 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" for related links 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. 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 - Oh! I will curse thee till thy frighted soul Runs mad with horror. --Nathaniel Lee (c.16531692) English dramatist. I shall curse you with book and bell and candle. --Sir Thomas Malory (c. 14201471) English writer. (The reference is to the ceremony of excommunication, performed since the eighth century with bell, book, and candle.) May your balls turn square and fester at the corners! --Scottish curse - A plague o' both your houses. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Romeo and Juliet_ [1595], III, i, 92 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. - 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 for ever and aye. --The Librarian at the Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona ----- 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. Ex.: "After a while, he stopped hurling imprecations... and, as he often did after such an outburst, became quite remorseful." --Wayne Johnston, "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" malediction [mal-uh-DIK-shun], noun: A curse or execration. Ex.: There Justice Minister Bola Ige, confronted with the general incivility of local police, placed a malediction on the cads. Said the Hon. Bola Ige, "I pray that God will make big holes in their pockets." --"Sic Semper Tyrannis! Oppressors Face People's Justice," _American Spectator_ [1 May 2001] . . 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]. Bullshit! --Mel Brooks (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. . . a generation ago. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. -- ^ 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. 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. --J. W. Marriott, Jr., (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. ----- 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. [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 To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes is easier than to think. --William Cowper (17311800) English poet and hymnodist. 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. The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. In Laurence J. Peter _Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time_, p. 147 [1977]. The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (15331592) French moralist and essayist. _Of Custom and Law_, ch. XXII . . see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for 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] Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. --George Carlin (1937 ) 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. A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. 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. 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. 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; a cynical community is a corrupt community. --John W. Gardner (19122002) American administrator. 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. 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. 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. Cynicism - the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. --Russell Lynes (19101991) American art critic. 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. Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try. --Peggy Noonan (1950 ) Speechwriter for U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. 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. _Journal_ The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who don't have it. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. 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_ [1892], act III ----- 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 - CAN'T WIN | 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 | CHILE & CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLICHES | 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 | CORRECTING - 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 End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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