“Look at me—I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches, but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”
Excerpted from: Nerburn, Kent and Louise Mengelkoch, eds. Native American Wisdom. San Rafael, CA: Classic Wisdom Collection, 1991.
“Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank, and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back, with interest.
We are Indians, and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty or money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank.”
Nootka Chief
Excerpted from: Nerburn, Kent and Louise Mengelkoch, eds. Native American Wisdom. San Rafael, CA: Classic Wisdom Collection, 1991.
“The color of the skin makes no difference. What is good and just for one is good and just for the other, and the Great Spirit made all men brothers.
I have a red skin, but my grandfather was white man. What does it matter? It is not the color of the skin that makes me good or bad.”
Arikara Chief
Excerpted from: Nerburn, Kent and Louise Mengelkoch, eds. Native American Wisdom. San Rafael, CA: Classic Wisdom Collection, 1991.
“There are four architectural periods:
Pre-1850: Situated one floor above the ground level (the piano nobile) in a palace, chateau, or large house. Vaulted ceilings were succeeded by flat painted ceilings. Used for dancing. A mainstay of the Jane Austen-Leo Tolstoy novel.
1850-1945: Situated on the ground floor of hotels and commonly decorated with classical columns and gold leaf. The floors were sprung for dancing, but they are now most often used by businessmen’s lunch clubs to listen to speakers or for charity functions. A fixture of Edith Whartonesque fiction.
1946-1970: Situated on the fortieth floor (the penthouse) where they revolve. These rooms are decorated with oil-based materials in primary colours. They are usually empty. Sometimes used in feature films to depict modern life.
Post-1970: Situated in hotel basements beside the garage. These cement rooms seat 2,500 people when all partitions are folded back. They are used for BUSINESS CONFERENCES and AWARD SHOWs. Thanks to the division of society into thousands of specialized groups, they are always full. The basement ballroom has replaced the opera house, which itself replaced the royal palaces as a place in which the elites legitimize themselves. They exist in a post-literate vacuum. See: CORPORATISM.
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“Civilization: The single and shortest definition of civilization may be the word language.
This is not to suggest that images or music are of lesser importance. It is simply that they have more to do with the unconscious. They are somehow part of metaphysics and religion. Civilization, if it means something concrete, is the conscious but unprogrammed mechanism by which humans communicate. And through communication they live with each other; think, create and act.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Social Sciences
“Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
“William Carlos Williams: (1883-1963) U.S. poet. Trained as a pediatrician, Williams spent a lifetime writing poetry and practicing medicine in his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. He is noted for making the ordinary appear extraordinary through clear and discrete imagery and powerful evocation of the world of common objects, as in the fresh impressions of the sensuous world expressed in ‘The Red Wheelbarrow,’ from Spring and All (1923). Paterson (1946-58), a five-part long poem, evokes a complex vision of modern American life. His other poetry includes Pictures from Brueghel (1962; Pulitzer Prize). His numerous prose works include essays, a trilogy of novels, short stories, drama, and autobiography.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in Quotes, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“Citizen: The individual is essentially a citizen.
This is reality inherited from Athens. We have little choice but to accept it since democracy cannot function in any other way. It is possible to hop along in a one-legged manner with citizens voting from time to time but refusing to participate and being denied most of their obligations. The result is a superficial, even dishonest, system and a population constantly dissatisfied with itself.
If the individual is not first a citizen, then the obligations and privileges which go with that status are effectively lost and the person ceases, to all intents and purposes, to be an individual.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, professional development
“Aestheticism: Generally, a term applied to a way of perceiving things that was common among the writers and artists of the 19th century who adhered to the doctrine of art for art’s sake. The movement, or cult, was largely influenced by German romantics, particularly Goethe. Because of the quest for beauty and the insistence that art should serve no moral or didactic purpose, it was related with the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Parnassians. Major exponents of aestheticism in America were Edgar Allan Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
 | Klausbernd on Aestheticism |
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
You must be logged in to post a comment.