Sunday, December 4, 2011 – The Europeans
It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe. ~ Henry James
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose. ~ Randall Jarrell
To enter Europe, you must have a valid passport with a photograph of yourself in which you look like you are being booked on charges of soliciting sheep. ~ Dave Barry
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries. ~ James Madison
If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him to Europe. ~ Thomas Jefferson
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. ~ Thomas Jefferson
To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French. ~ Madeleine Albright
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there. ~ Sonny Rollins
America’s health care system is second only to Japan… Canada, Sweden, Great Britain… well all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don’t live in Paraguay! ~ Homer Simpson
If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans. ~ Otto von Bismarck
Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image. ~ Aldous Huxley
France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they’ve forgotten all about it. I’m afraid that the American culture is a disaster. ~ Johnny Depp
Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe. ~ Jackie Mason
These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don’t have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks. ~ Jimmy Buffett
Europe’s the mayonnaise, but America supplies the good old lobster. ~ D. H. Lawrence
I’ve come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version. ~ Don DeLillo
Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe. ~ Ezra Pound
Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe. ~ Angela Carter
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof. ~ Mary McCarthy
Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power. ~ Joan Didion
And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West. ~ Dave Barry
Europeans don’t seem to have the groupie mentality. ~ Kid Rock
I don’t understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions? ~ Joni Mitchell
Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo
It’s striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World. ~ Jared Diamond
When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans. ~ Mary McCarthy
You have one big mythology in your favor: Everyone believes that you Europeans are impeccable. But I know you are jerks. ~ Fernando Flores
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being. ~ Albert Einstein
European toilet paper is made from the same material that Americans use for roofing, which is why Europeans tend to remain standing throughout soccer matches. ~ Dave Barry
The time to enjoy a European trip is about three weeks after unpacking. ~ George Ade
European imperialism long ago made Tahiti a distant suburb of Paris, the missionaries made it a suburb of Christ’s kingdom, and the radio made it a suburb of Los Angeles. ~ Cedric Belfrage
I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent. ~ Erma Bombeck
World War I, that tiresome European engagement that threatened to close down French couture. ~ Caroline Seebohm
Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility – the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past. ~ W. H. Auden
I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. ~ Eddie Izzard
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future. ~ Alison Lurie
Just Above Sunset 