Modest Mussorgsky Quotes

Germany is made to travel in, Italy to sojourn in,… and France to live in, [but England was made] to think in.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

The culture of Greece is not the same as the culture of Germany, and to fuse them into a single unit is extremely difficult.

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.

I don't have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy - nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.

There is a German proverb which says that Take-it-Easy and Live-Long are brothers.

The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.... An Irish kitchenis usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.

Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange.

I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.

What about life, Ninotchka? Do Russians never think about life, of the moment in which we are living? It's the only moment we ever really have.

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically.

Philosophy is "an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.

...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

'Twas strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 'twas philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted.

The emblem of a philosophy is not that it contains a set of specific thoughts , but that it generates a way of thinking.

If the East loves infinity, the West delights in boundaries.

As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.

Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,-imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,-"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land; to the English that of the sea; to the Germans that of-the air!" Richter: German humorist & prose writer.

It is hard to compare cultures without overgeneralizing, but I think a lot of American poetry has an assertiveness - an upbeat quality - that's less typical of Canadian poetry. Of course there are poets in both countries to whom that generalization does not apply. Speaking broadly, I'd describe Canadians as being a bit more reserved than Americans. Not less opinionated - just less direct.