Customs Quotes

• Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

  Thomas Paine

  Remembrance, Atheism, Positive Atheism

  Thomas Paine (1826). “An Essay on the Origin of Free Masonry”, p.9

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Customs represent the experience of mankind.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mankind

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Powerful, Tradition

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.1033, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a thing is old, it is a sign that it was fit to live. Old families, old customs, old styles survive because they are fit to survive. The guarantee of continuity is quality. Submerge the good in a flood of the new, and good will come back to join the good which the new brings with it. Old-fashioned hospitality, old-fashioned politeness, old-fashioned honor in business had qualities of survival. These will come back.

  Eddie Rickenbacker

  Business, Style, Survival

  39 Copy quote

• He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

  John Stuart Mill

  Choices, Doe

  John Stuart Mill (1859). “On Liberty”, p.105

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The morality of customs,the spirit of the laws, produces the man emancipated from the law.

  Gilles Deleuze

  Men, Law, Spirit

  Gilles Deleuze (2006). “Nietzsche and Philosophy”, p.128, A&C Black

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

  James A. Michener

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

  "Good Advice". Book by William Safire and Leonard Safir, 1982.

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.

  Ruth Benedict

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  May, Way, Tradition

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.61, Courier Corporation

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom adapts itself to expediency.

  Tacitus

  Habit, Expediency

  Tacitus (2013). “The Annals”, p.253, Courier Corporation

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom alone regulates morals.

  Anatole France

  Morality, Moral

  Anatole France (2015). “The Revolt of the Angels: Works by France”, p.130, 谷月社

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Nature

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu”, p.142

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

  Mark Twain

  Logic, Tradition, Harder

  1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch.5.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The empire of custom is most mighty.

  Publilius Syrus

  Empires

  4 Copy quote

• Bad laws make bad customs.

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  Law, Bad Laws

  Jane Aiken Hodge (2014). “Watch the Wall, My Darling”, p.16, A&C Black

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

  William Torrey Harris

  Ninety Nine, Historical, Path

  "The Philosophy of Education". Book by William Torrey Harris, 1889.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Stranger, Reason, Absurd

  8 Copy quote

• There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Peace, Heart

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.234, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nice customs curtsy to great kings.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Nice

  William Shakespeare, Andrew Gurr (2005). “King Henry V”, p.214, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.

  Virginia Woolf

  Play, Support, Soul

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2281, Delphi Classics

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

  John Updike

  Change, Art, Reflection

  John Updike (1991). “Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism”, Alfred A. Knopf

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  War, Drug, Worship

  7 Copy quote

• The customs of the Jews are base and abominable and owe their persistence to their depravity. Jews are extremely loyal to one another, always ready to show compassion, but towards every other people they feel only hate and enimity. As a race (the Jews are not a race, because they have mingled with the other races to the point that they are only a people, not a race), they are prone to lust; among themselves nothing is unlawful.

  Tacitus

  Hate, Compassion, Persistence

  26 Copy quote

• If you simply take the name of Christ upon you and call yourself His servant, yet do not obey Him, but follow your own whim, or your own hereditary prejudice, or the custom of some erroneous church-you are no servant of Christ. If you really are a servant of Christ, your first duty is to obey Him.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Names, Church, Prejudice

  Spurgeon, Charles H. “The Complete Works of C. H. Spurgeon, Volume 50: Sermons 2864-2915”, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ill customs and bad advice are seldom forgotten.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Advice, Forgotten, Ill

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, Nayika Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source