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CULTURE/D --- CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
CURE --- CURIOSITY --- CURMUDGEONS ---CURSE
CURSING --- CUSTOMER (THE) --- CUSTOM/S --- CYNICS

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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. 339—397)
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 (1822—1888)
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 (1561—1626)
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] (1694—1773)
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 (551—479 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] (1908—2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.
_American Way_ [March 1975]

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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 (1809—1882)
English naturalist.
_Autobiography_ (ed. Francis Darwin) [1887]

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The truest expression of a people is
in its dances and its music. Bodies
never lie.
--Agnes de Mille (1905—1993)
American dancer and choreographer,
In _New York Times Magazine_ [11 May 1975].

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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]

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'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 (1803—1882)
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 (1756—1836)
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 (1749—1832)
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 (1909—1986)
Australian ballet dancer.
[2 May 1969]

When I hear the word 'culture' . . . I release
the safety-catch of my Browning!
--Hanns Johst (1890—1978)
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 (1926—2006)
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 (1890—1957)
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 (1893—1967)
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 (1918—2008)
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 (1915—1985)
American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer.
"The Third Man" [1949 film]
(Words added by Welles to Graham Geene's script - ODTQ.)

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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.

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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.




Click picture to ZOOM
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

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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 (1596—1650)
French philosopher and mathematician.
_Discours de la mιthode_ [1637] (Discourse on Method), pt. 1

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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".

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The condition of women affords in all countries the
best criterion by which to judge the character of
men.
--Frances Wright [Fanny Wright] (1795—1852)
Scottish-born American social reformer.
_Views of Society and Manners in America_ [1821]


TOPICAL

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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. [. . . ]

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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]




CURE

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see "HEALTH" for related links


Absence, that common cure of love.
--Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616)
Spanish novelist.
"Don Quixote de la Mancha"
pt I, bk. 3, ch. 10 [1605—1615]

[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 (1915—1990)
American publisher.

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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"

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Some remedies are worse than the disease itself.
--Publilius Syrus (85—43 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. 1552—1618)
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 BC—65 A.D.)
Roman philosopher and poet.
_Hippolytus_

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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]

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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.

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"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. [...]

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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

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.

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 (1722—1803)
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 (354—430)
Christian theologian and bishop of Hippo in
Roman Africa [396-430].
_Confessiones_ c. 400 (The Confessions), bk. X, # 35

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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 (1561—1626)
English philosopher and essayist.

Your curiosity
Runs open-mouth'd, ravenous as winter wolf.
I dare not stand in its way.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
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 (1745—1814)
British actor and dramatist.

-

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
The important thing is to not stop questioning.
--Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
German-American physicist who developed the
special and general theories of relativity.


The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
--Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
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 (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.

Willie saw some dynamite,
Couldn't understand it quite;
Curiosity never pays.
It rained Willie seven days.
--Harry Graham (1874—1936)
British writer and journalist.
_Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899]

-

Shun the inquisitive person, for he is also a talker.
--Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65—8 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 (1741—1801)
Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics.

-

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain
characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
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 (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_ [1665]

Curiosity killed the cat.
--"L.A. Times" [22 August 1901]

A penny for your thought.
--Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
Anglo-Irish poet and satirist.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention,
as attention is of memory.
--Richard Whately (1787—1863)
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.




CURMUDGEONS

.
.


^

Fred Allen (1894—1956),
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 (1893—1967)
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. (1885—1945)
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 (1856—1950)
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.




CURSE/S

.
.

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] (1788—1824)
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.1653—1692)
English dramatist.

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.
--Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1420—1471)
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 (1564—1616)
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 (1564—1616)
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]




CURSING

.
.

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 (1916—2000)
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)
(1882—1942) 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 (1880—1956)
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.]




CUSTOMER (THE)

.
.

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 (1863—1947)
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 (1918—1992)
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.




CUSTOM/S

.
.

see: "CONFORMITY"
see: "HABIT"
see: "TRADITION"


There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom
where its edicts are not resisted.
--Christian Nestell Bovee (1820—1904)
American writer.

[O tempora! O mores!]
Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 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 (1731—1800)
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 (1802—1870)
French novelist and dramatist.

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
--John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
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 (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
_Of Custom and Law_, ch. XXII




CYNICS

.
.

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 (1813—1887)
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 (1903—1983)
British author, museum director,
broadcaster, and art historian.

A cynic can chill and dishearten
with a single word.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
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 (1904—1978)
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 (1879—1969)
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 (1869—1948)
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 (1912—2002)
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 (1883—1955)
Spanish philosopher.

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and
a wise man to be clever enough not to.
--Fannie Hurst (1889—1968)
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 (1775—1864)
English poet.

Cynicism - the intellectual cripple's
substitute for intelligence.
--Russell Lynes (1910—1991)
American art critic.

Cynics are only happy in making the world
as barren for others as they have made it
for themselves.
--George Meredith (1828—1909)
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 (1854—1912)
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 (1688—1744)
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 (1864—1910)
French novelist and dramatist.
_Journal_

The power of accurate observation is
often called cynicism by those who
don't have it.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
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 (1854—1900)
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





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