East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

¹ Cultural  

1. The culture of the West (Europe and the Americas) will always be very different from that of the East (Asia). (Twain means “two.”) This saying is part of the refrain of “The Ballad of East and West,” a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

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East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ² Cultural  

1. A line from a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It continues, a few lines later: “But there is neither East nor West … When two strong men stand face to face.”

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Example Sentences

Sir: It seems to me that Kipling could never be more wrong than when he wrote "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."

From Time Magazine Archive

Sirs: The motif of this book is that "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," and that is a lot of hooey.

From Time Magazine Archive

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," wrote Rudyard Kipling, and in many ways he couldn't have been more wrong.

From Time Magazine Archive

East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, but this does not prevent my Japanese garden from sitting on an old English refectory table in the dining-room.

From If I May by Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander)

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."

From Where Half The World Is Waking Up The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions by Poe, Clarence Hamilton