Foreign

“ Do you find in it that sagacity, prudence, that dexterity, that quickness of perception, and those conciliatory moods which we are always taught to believe necessary in the transaction of our foreign affairs? Is there to be seen that knowledge of human nature, and especially that peculiar kind of science, most necessary in these affairs—an acquaintance with the character of foreign countries and of the chief actors in the scene? ”

“ Cultivate, above all things, your foreign dispositions, for you are now on foreign duty, and your country reposes on your shoulders and eminent talents the whole burden of its foreign interests in this part of the world. ”

“ It has happened to many of you to be in foreign lands. You look: there are people there also, God’s creatures, too; and you talk with them as with the men of your own country. But when it comes to saying a hearty word—you will see. ”

“ The foreign visitor, in the rawest period of our growth, has not failed in picturesque, even lurid contrast, and has not found us inarticulate on ourselves or bashful of suggesting our merits. If the tone has been one of bluster rather than of philosophic analysis, it is genuine and not assumed, even to the wincing at the reflection returned by the not too faultless mirror. ”

“ What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. ”

“ If a knowledge of other countries and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt to look on all that is strange and foreign. ”

“ Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on our part towards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts; too serious, perhaps you will think, to be interfered with; for we are all of us in the habit of leaving great things alone, as if Providence would mind them, and attending ourselves only to little things which we know, practically, Providence doesn't mind unless we do. ”

“ As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. ”

“ The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land. ”

“ There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth. ”

“ In traveling through foreign lands, one sees so much that is indecent, obscene, and shockingly profane, according to his our way of thinking, that he scarcely knows what to include and what to suppress in his accounts of foreign manners, customs and institutions. ”

“ Certainly the true End of visiting Foreign Parts, is to look into their Customs and Policies, and observe in what Particulars they excel or come short of our own; to unlearn some odd Peculiarities in our Manners, and wear off such awkward Stiffnesses and Affectations in our Behaviour, as may possibly have been contracted from constantly associating with one Nation of Men, by a more free, general, and mixed Conversation. ”

“ In our offices and councils, in our schools and colleges, in our homes and hearths, everywhere it is the influence of foreign genius, of foreign labour, of foreign enterprise and foreign standards of taste, happiness and duty that has been at work. ”

“ The following paragraphs will, we hope, help the man or woman who is traveling abroad, for they contain all the important details of foreign etiquette. But in addition, we have suggested that those who intend to visit France or Germany or any other foreign country, spend a little time reading about that country and learning a bit about the language. There are many good books available in public libraries and elsewhere, that teach one a great deal about the people, interesting places, and language of foreign countries. ”

“ You will not be surprised to learn that in the peculiar exigencies of the times our intercourse with foreign nations has been attended with profound solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs. ”

“ Accounts of foreign countries, even when you have not seen them personally, nearly always awaken a lively interest, especially if you are able to give your hearers detailed descriptions of the life led by foreigners who occupy positions corresponding to their own. ”

“ I hate and despise a shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose. ”

“ We travel-writers love to picture the gruff, impolite American because he shows the reading public by contrast that we are cultured, considerate persons, with an international breadth of mind that enables us to appreciate foreign countries and foreign customs. ”

“ The purpose was practical - to learn about foreign people and their languages, countries, and courts. Knowledge of the terrain, resources, prosperity, and stability of their countries was particularly useful to a future diplomatic or political career. ”

“ If we are to continue to enjoy success in the complex realms of foreign policy and international commerce, then we must also be familiar with the languages, customs, and physical circumstances of our neighbors around the globe. ”

“ The royal refugee our breed restores,
With foreign courtiers, and with foreign whores:
And carefully re-peopled us again,
Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign,
With such a blest and true-born English fry,
As much illustrates our nobility. ”

“ I am told that several new books, written by foreigners, in praise of our present brilliant Government, are now in the presses of those our frontier towns, and will soon be laid before the public as foreign productions. ”

“ Foreigners all say of us, that we are the saddest of all people; that when they come to England, they are struck with our silence, and gloominess, and careworn faces, and our want of merriment and cheerfulness. ”

“ However, it would only be necessary to become conversant with the Affairs themselves, in order, if requisite, to remove all difficulties of the sort. “There is a thing,” reader, “which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch;” we need not finish the quotation.
To defend the preceding observations from misconstruction, we will make, in conclusion, one additional remark; Foreign Affairs are one thing—Foreign Gentlemen another. ”

“ The foreign employé has his work to do—diplomatic, professional, or commercial; the native is in no particular hurry to court the esteem of outsiders, being quite contented with his own high estimate of himself. ”

“ 39 Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? ”

“ Am I free and independent?—or am I nothing in myself, and merely the manifestation of a foreign power? ”

“ In fact, seventy-two per cent of the citizens of the state are either foreign born or of foreign descent. All these people came originally from countries whose civilizations are much older than our own. ”

“ Am I to divide it up at this time of day with a beggarly foreigner—a man without means, without appearance, without proof, a pretender, an adventurer, a chattering mountebank? I thought America boasted having lands for all men! ”

“ I have always been taught to believe foreigners a cold, practical, calculating kind of people—so different from us. You never seemed to me like a foreigner; ah, Richard, why will you make me remember that you are not one of us! ”

“ Foreigners, too, have aided me in my task as much as my own country, and I shall carry to my grave a feeling of affection for Europe as well as for France, to whom I would at times go on my knees and entreat not to divide her own household by fratricidal jealousy, nor to forget her duty and her common task, which is civilization. ”

“ In fact, regard them in any way, and they will be found to possess the elements of a fine people, who want but peace and the stimulus of foreign emulation to bring them forward among the nations of the earth with great distinction. ”

“ Go where you will among the hardy sons of toil on land or sea, and there you find industrious and faithful foreigners bending their muscles to the work. At the bar and in the high places of commerce you find them. Enter the retreats of learning, and there too you find them, shedding upon our country the glory of science. ”

“ If you be affronted, it is better, in a foreign country, to pass it by in silence, and with a jest, though with some dishonour, than to endeavour revenge; ”

“ Without adopting blindly foreign modes in anything merely because they are foreign, surely we should be wise to learn from other nations, who excel us in aught good or useful, all that we can which may tend to remedy viiiour own defects ”

“ But the salt of the native character remains undiluted in the blood of the people, and marks them as genuinely as ever, though they have learned to avoid some of the exuberance of language and look which made foreigners smile, and their sensitive countrymen blush when they met them in the picture galleries of Europe. ”

“ With no domestic policy, he is obliged to divert the attention of the people from the consideration of their own affairs to the distraction of foreign politics. His scheme of conduct is so devoid of all political principle that when forced to appeal to the people, his only claim to their confidence is his name. ”

“ Foreigners, the French in particular, take from us precisely that which is least ours, that which least clashes with their spirit, and, naturally enough, that which best accommodates itself to the idea that they have formed of us, an idea that is always and necessarily superficial. ”

“ By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, [555]
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, [556]
[Pg 214] By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned! ”

“ I’m intensely interested, as you know, in the problems of life, and this is one of them.”
“But you know foreigners claim that we as a nation are not really interested in culture and knowledge, but only in their money value. ”

“ Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,—but it lay there under all their culture. ”

“ The only foreigners I know are those who write me letters: malicious busybodies, people who want subscriptions to all sorts of shams, or invite me to join respectable, humbug societies, or write merely to gratify a low curiosity. ”

“ Now the219 truth is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. ”

“ Is conduct of that kind right? What will foreigners say? Does any one care calmly to sit by and hear himself traduced? Why should you lead foreigners to suppose that all is not well with us, and that we are not patriotic? ”

“ They point over to the foreigner, the clean-stepping, braced, self-confident foreigner, good at arms, good at the arts, and eclipsing us in industriousness manual and mental, and some dare to say, in splendour of verse=-our supreme accomplishment. ”

“ The common people, who went up into the interior to trade, fell in with their customs with a degree of plasticity and an air of gaiety and full assent, which no other foreigners have, at least to the same extent, shown. ”

“ Over the whole face of our country the charm of a refined existence is diffused. There is nothing which strikes foreigners so much as the beauty [4] of our country abodes, and the peculiarity of our country life. ”