quotes that describe the character of your ethnicity (from books, articles, old interviews, etc.)

[Atlantic Islander]

I like all the descriptions I posted, they are as true now as they were then.

[randomguy1235]

I can't really find one about Palis. The quotes pulled up are all pertinent to the Israeli-Pali conflict .

[RussiaPrussia]

i don care what people have to say about my people

[Atlantic Islander]

i don care what people have to say about my people

They don't have to be by others.

[Mazik]

"The Swedes are well built, powerful, supple, capable of enduring the hardest work, starvation and trouble. They are born warriors, full of pride..." - François Voltaire

[Drawing-slim]

A passage I really like reading from Edith Durham's journey in high Albania. She describes the style of these Albanian tribes kullas-houses which in turn portrays their character/nature as well.


.."We descended to the river's bank by Gimaj, a village of Shala, and followed up the valley. The river became a torrent, leaping from rock to rock–the pine-clad mountains towered on either hand, and the houses were all kulas –tall stone towers, loopholed for rifles.

A final ascent brought us to the plain of Thethi, a grandly wild spot where the valley opens out. The ground is cultivated, and well watered by cunning little canals. Great isolated boulders are scattered over it, on which stand kulas.

The eyes, some one has said, are the windows of the soul. In extreme wrath, at fighting-point, when a man goes white and strikes, the pupils of his eyes contract to black specks. So do the blank, windowless walls of the kulas, with their tiny loopholes, stand ever threatening.

I think no place where human beings live has given me such an impression of majestic isolation from all the world. It is a spot where the centuries shrivel; the river might be the world's well-spring, its banks the fit home of elemental instincts–passions that are red and rapid."

[1stLightHorse]

“The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.”

― Bill Bryson on "Australians", In a Sunburned Country


“There is no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian. I firmly believe this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludges on no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed. And once you have entered it, you will never leave it.”

― John O'Grady

[KrashNick]

"The Albanians, these tigers of mountain wars ... have as their religion rebellion. Even their worst warrior is one of the strongest and bravest on the battle-field, just as if he was a knight on the legendary horse. But he has no horse, nor proper weapons for battle. Instead of the horse, he has a lance which strikes as lightning, he has spears who's points are full of posion as the sting of hornets, he has also a wooden bow with some arrows. Furthermore, he is stronger than iron ... "

- Ibn Kemal, Historian of the Turkish court during Skanderbeg's war against the Turks.


"...isn't the Albanian, who, being a slave, did not allow enslavement, freedom-loving? This is a question that could hardly be understood by anyone who has not lived in Albania. The most liberty-loving people in the Balkans is the Albanian people. The Albanian, taken alone, as an individual, is an anarchist by nature. He would brook no bondage let alone on his people, he would not let anything, seen as possibly humiliating, befall his house. The Albanian house stands alone and apart from the rest..."

- Description from a brilliant Bulgarian observer and connoisseur of Albania. (1924)


"The story of the Albanians deserves a study in itself. Attracted by the 'sword, the gold trappings, and the honours, they left their mountains chiefly in order to become soldiers. In the sixteenth century they were to be found in Cyprus, in Venice, in Mantua, in Rome, in Naples, and Sicily, and as far abroad as Madrid, where they went to present their projects and their grievances, to ask for barrels of gunpowder or years of pension, arrogant, imperious, always ready for a fight."

- Nicholas Pappas

[alfieb]

"Italy without Sicily leaves no image in the spirit whatsoever. It is Sicily that is the key to everything"
-Goethe

[Harkonnen]

There was this Old Native, so I read his stories, growing up - among others - with Finnish immigrants. I don't know where these stories are know (where do stories go, do they get recycled or what) so I try to re-tell it. So this guy quite liked my homies. They were not uppity uppity like some others might be, so they were easy to get along. Some Finns started to grow their hairs long like the natives and even wear bandanas, I think these days we call this integrating with the native society, so they were very modern in doing so. So anyway when this guy was just-a pint-sized-man his family's horse died or smth along those lines & they were in dire conditions from hence on. & he proceeds to tell how they're Finn neighbor from the woods one morning comes and loans them his horse only saying: "just don't beat the poor beast." It was very very touching first person account of live events from the American woods.

Here's a classic

The Finnish Battalion was unique from the other Freiwilliger of the Wiking division, such as the Dutch or the Norwegian contingents in Westland and Nordland, by the fact that it's Officer's and NCO's were ex-Finn Army veterans, and fully in charge. The Finns were always an independent breed, and their first introduction to German 'parade-ground' discipline was met by a steely disregard for German language "befehle." (orders). The Finns held out for Finnish language NCO's, and it was there and then that the Germans realized that this contingent might be formed up and kitted out as a Waffen-SS unit, but would ultimately be commanded only by Finnish speaking Officers.