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Marco Polo Quotes

Browse 17 quotes about Marco Polo.

Marco Polo Quotes

“Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa’s Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs”

FoodSpicesFood HistoryAlexander The GreatMarco PoloVasco Da GamaCape Of Good HopeArabic CuisineRainbow Cuisine
Book:Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
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“What benefit have the Hindus derived from their contact with Christian nations? The idea generally prevalent in this country about the morality and truthfulness of the Hindus evidently has been very low. Such seeds of enmity and hatred have been sown by the missionaries that it would be an almost Herculean task to establish better relations between India and America... If we examine Greek, Chinese, Persian, or Arabian writings on the Hindus, before foreigners invaded India, we find an impartial description of their national character. Megasthenes, the famous Greek ambassador, praises them for their love of truth and justice, for the absence of slavery, and for the chastity of their women. Arrian, in the second century, Hiouen-thsang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim in the seventh century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, have written in highest terms of praise of Hindu morality. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars, except Christian missionaries.”

CharacterAmericaChristianityMoralityIndiaChineseGreekTruthfulnessPersianEnmityHinduArabianMissionariesHerculesJainismMarco PoloChristian MissionariesHerculeanArrianMegasthenesXuanzang
Book:The Monist
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“The Han language resembles no other on this earth. While I had no trouble learning to speak Mongol, and to write with its alphabet, I never learned more than a rudimentary comprehension of Han. The Mongol speech is gruff and harsh, like its speakers, but it at least employs sounds not too different from those heard in our Western languages. The Han, by contrast, is a speech of staccato syllables, and they are sung rather than spoken. Evidently the Han throat is incapable of forming more than a very few of the sounds that other people make. The sound of r, for one, is quite beyond them. My name in their speech was always Mah-ko. And, having so very few noises to work with, the Han must sound them on different tones—high, mid, low, rising, falling—to make a sufficient variety for compiling a vocabulary. It is like this: suppose our Ambrosian plainsong Gloria in excelsis had that meaning of “glory in the highest” only when sung to its traditional up and down neumes, and, if the syllables were sung in different ups and downs, were to change its meaning utterly—to “darkness in the lowest” or “dishonor to the basest” or even “fish for the frying.”

ChineseMarco PoloMandarin
Book:The Journeyer
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“In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as brazilwood and pepper, which added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity... From these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales.”

PeopleNeedsFeelsLittlesHas BeensBookSeemsFormUsedOrderMoralRiskModernLandProductsCivilizationConsciousIndiaPhotographTalesRangeBoredomOur SocietyTravelerSpicesOld DaysSinkingPeppersMarcosPoloMarco Polo
Author:Claude Levi-Strauss
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“The scripts for Marco Polo are absolutely, positively fantastic. The challenge of making that show in China has proved to be as formidable as we feared. It's not like making a movie in China where, once you load up and you leave, you're gone. We have to be able to come back and capture something that's going to feel like a major feature film, on a television budget, and do it, hopefully season after season, so we are taking more time than the producers thought.”

FeelsShowsAbleFilmChallengesGoneTelevisionMajorsSeasonsScriptsChinaProducersHopefullyFantasticBudgetsFeaturesMore TimeCaptureLoadPositivelyFormidableMarcosPoloMarco Polo
Author:Chris Albrecht
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“There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus' visit came to be known as a "discovery.”

BookOrderWishKnownOceanDiscoveryEuropeBlueDespiteIndianMailJournalRenaissanceBasementsColumbusMarcosCataloguesPoloSearsEscalatorsMarco Polo
Book:Another Roadside Attraction
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“Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.”

MenWorldGivingMeanBeautifulReligionReligiousThis WorldHabitEasierPromiseDrugBandMountainMembersGiving UpGardenTalesOld ManUnfortunateBeautiful WomenAssassinsMarcosRecruitGood HabitsLushPoloUnfortunate ThingsMarco Polo
Author:W. Somerset Maugham
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