Language And Culture Quotes

“Let us dedicate this new era to mothers around the world, and also to the mother of all mothers -- Mother Earth. It is up to us to keep building bridges to bring the world closer together, and not destroy them to divide us further apart. We can pave new roads towards peace simply by understanding other cultures. This can be achieved through traveling, learning other languages, and interacting with others from outside our borders. Only then will one truly discover how we are more alike than different. Never allow language or cultural traditions to come between brothers and sisters. The same way one brother may not like his sister's choice of fashion or hairstyle, he will never hate her for her personal style or music preference. If you judge a man, judge only his heart. And if you should do so, make sure you use the truth in your conscience when weighing one's character. Do not measure anybody strictly based on the bad you see in them and ignore all the good.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“She tried to keep herself and her life small and manageable. Much like a poem. The condensing of the wide, unknowable past that runs right up behind them. She doesn’t do that anymore, her life isn’t a poem, she knows it’s a big, big story. Her people go all the way back to the riverbank, and further, after all — the river and what happened at the river was a time traveller, their story has no bounds in time.”
― Tara June Winch, The Yield

“The evidence of their civilisation, after so many years of farming, was difficult to find on the surface of the land. But they said it was embedded in the language of Albert’s dictionary, that with the Reverend’s list and all the words that Albert wrote, and other old people remembering the words too, that it would now be recognised as a resurrected language, brought back from extinction.”
― Tara June Winch, The Yield

“I continue to admit that Italian is not my language, that it's an adopted language I love and use without possession. But I also ask myself: Who possesses a language, and why? Is it a question of lineage? Mastery? Use? Affect? Attachment? What does it mean, in the end, to belong to a language?”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Translating Myself and Others

“How and why many of us blindly repeat words, idioms, and phrases passed down to us like shabby clothes from our parents or ancestors, without even pondering the exact meaning of what we say.”
― Louis Yako

“[T]he phrase 'first world problems.' The first problematic issue with this phrase is the assumption that we live in three (or more) worlds rather than one planet.”
― Louis Yako

“What feels polite in one language can sound evasive in another - misunderstanding is often our first shared culture.”
― Yoon Jeong Kim, The South Korean Diplomat's Wife: Stories of Silk Dresses, Scandals, and Secrets