Quotations
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"Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough,what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants"
Edward T. Hall
"Dutch is not so much a language as a disease of the throat."
Mark Twain
"You know the idea that there are parallel universes where each is slightly and subtly different from the next? Well, moving from England to Holland is rather like that. You’re going to feel a bit disoriented for the first few months. It might look superficially like England, but little by little you’ll start to notice the differences.”
Brian A. Bramson
'Bon mot' among diplomats and Euro-politicians
“In the Netherlands it is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it"
"The more you try to learn Dutch, the more the Dutch refuse to speak Dutch to you and the more they complain that you haven't learned it."
From: The UnDutchables
“We Dutch are a nation of undertakers”
Joop den Uyl (Dutch Prime Minister 1973-1977)
“I hate you all welcome”
"God created the earth but the Dutch created Holland"
Dutch saying
“Dutch sounds like nothing so much as a peculiar version of English (…) We would be walking down the street when a stranger would step from the shadows and say ‘Hello, sailors, care to grease my flanks?’’ or something, and all he would want was a light for his cigarette. It was disconcerting. I found this again when I presented myself at a small hotel on Prinsengracht and asked the kind-faced proprietor if he had a single room. ‘Oh, I don’t believe so’, he said (in English), ‘but let me check with my wife.’ He thrust his head through a doorway of beaded curtains and called, ‘Marta, what stirs in your leggings? Are you most moist?’ From the back a voice bellowed, ‘No, but I tingle when I squirt.’ ‘Are you of assorted odours?’ ‘Yes, of beans and sputum.’ ‘And what of your pits – do they exude sweetness?’ ‘Truly.’ ‘Shall I suck them at eventide?’ ‘Most heartily!’ He returned to me wearing a sad look: ‘I’m sorry, I thought there might have been a cancellation, but unfortunately not.’ “
From: Bill Bryson. Neither Here Nor There. Travels in Europe.