“There is something inescapably bovine about an American tourist in motion as part of a group. A certain greedy placidity about them. Us, rather. In port we automatically become Peregrinator americanusy Die Lumpenamerikaner.”

—  David Foster Wallace , book A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

The Ugly Ones.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Essays

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is something inescapably bovine about an American tourist in motion as part of a group. A certain greedy placidit…" by David Foster Wallace?
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace 185
American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008

Related quotes

J.B. Priestley photo

“Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"The Dark Hours", in Too Many People, and Other Reflections http://books.google.com/books?id=WXRMy9eD_GkC&q="Those+no+sooner+have+I+touched+the+pillow+people+are+past+my+comprehension+There+is+something+suspiciously+bovine+about+them"&pg=PA80#v=onepage (1928).

Francis Bacon photo

“Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

David Hilbert photo

“Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.”

David Hilbert (1862–1943) German prominent mathematician

"Axiomatic Thought" (1918), printed in From Kant to Hilbert, Vol. 2 by William Bragg Ewald

Jack McDevitt photo

“We’re talking about something we all want very much to find. And that automatically makes Ed’s conclusions suspect.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 30)

David Levithan photo

“But there was something about you that made me think of sparks and motion.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“It was but that, seeing him and so imagining that something about him was otherwise, automatically they feared him.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Vergil in Averno (1987)

Revilo P. Oliver photo

“History, in other words, is just a device to be used by well-paid boobherds to drive the American cattle in bovine content to their pastures or to the abattoir.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Price of the Head, Instauration magazine (March 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Andrei Codrescu photo

“Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate “tourist traps” which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the “intrepid tourist.” This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“The Tourist,” Raised by Puppets (1990).

John Ashbery photo

“Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Source: Paris Review Interview (1983)

Willa Cather photo

“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book I, Ch. 2
My Antonia (1918)
Context: I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Related topics