Différences et Excentricités

Gustave FLAUBERT	"Dictionnaire des idées reçues" (paru avant 1880)	Melon : joli sujet de conversation à table. Est-ce un légume ? Est-ce un fruit ? Les Anglais les mangent au dessert, ce qui étonne. Jardins anglais : plus naturels que les jardins à la française.
George MIKES	"How to be an Alien" (1946)	"In England, everything is the other way round. ( When people say England, they sometimes mean Great-Britain, sometimes the United-Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles - but never England.)"
George MIKES	"How to be an Alien" (1946)	"If you go for a walk with a friend, don't say a word for hours ; if you go out for a walk with your dog, keep chatting to him."
Pierre DANINOS	"Les Carnets du Major Thompson" (1954)	"De temps en temps, à Londres, un citoyen, soit par caprice, soit par amour du sport, traverse Piccadilly en blazer rouge et en culotte blanche, mais il serait du dernier mauvais goût de se retourner sur lui. Chacun est libre d'agir et de se vêtir à sa guise, sans crainte d'être remarqué, dans un pays où le bon ton commande de voir les gens sans les regarder."
Antony MIALL	"Xenophobe's Guide to the English" (1993)	"As far as the English are concerned, all of life's greatest problems can be summed up in one word - foreigners. [...] 'Foreign-ness' for the English starts to a certain extent at the end of their own street."
Antony MIALL	"Xenophobe's Guide to the English" (1993)	"To the rest of the world the entire English race is eccentric. To the English themselves, the concept of eccentricity is a useful way of coping with the problem of anti-social or un-English behaviour in one of their own kind. Solidarity dictates that all the English, whether sane or not, are basically good eggs and worth any ten foreigners at twice the price. So, to a certain extent, the English cultivate the idea of eccentricity as agreable and even admirable. The phenomenon of the eccentric does not exists in its own right. Class and money have a lot to do with it. Mental affliction, usually described as lunacy in the poor, is grandly referred to as eccentricity in the rich. It is all a question of scale. Thus, non-threatening dotty behaviour, such as Lord Berner's predilection for travelling about the country in a motor-drawn horsebox filled with butterflies, and playing a grand piano, was met with a kind of admiration. He was, after all, a Lord."
Julian BARNES	"Lettres de Londres" (1995)	"Les Anglais ne sont finalement pas mécontents de passer pour un peuple qui sait allier le respect des conventions et l'excentricité."

Différences & Excentricités