Customs Quotes - Page 12

• What if custom is wrong? demanded the part of her that believed in the code of chivalry. A knight must set things right.

  Tamora Pierce

  Knights, What If, Chivalry

  Tamora Pierce (2007). “First Test: Book 1 of the Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.70, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Beautiful, Female, Variation

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• Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.

  Steven Pinker

  Book, Opportunity, Games

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.211, Penguin

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• In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Order, Break Through

  John Stuart Mill (2003). “Mill's On Liberty”, p.81, Agora Publications, Inc.

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• We compromise ourselves the day we are born. If we are looking for the original sin, there it is- our incapacity to live honestly with ourselves because we are human, because we are shackled by custom, by obligations and we accept compromise only in the light of our conscience, answerable as we are only to ourselves.

  F. Sionil José

  Light, Compromise, Sin

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• There are apparently few limitations either of time or space on where the psyche might journey and only the customs inspector employed by our own inhibitions restricts what it might bring back when it reenters the home country of everyday consciousness.

  Tom Robbins

  Country, Home, Journey

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.194, Bantam

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• Canada and America are very, very different. It's true that we share a language and many customs. But Americans have a very different view of the world.

  Joseph Boyden

  Views, America, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

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• But change proves that you are still alive. Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die

  Robin Hobb

  War, Believe, Fighting

  Robin Hobb (2014). “The Tawny Man Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate”, p.1108, Del Rey

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• A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Distance, Men, Civilization

  Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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• Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Wisdom, Fun, Discipline

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Essays”, p.220, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• Printing and transporting paper is very expensive, and e-books eliminate the expensive four-color printing, the higher quality paper, the ocean shipping, the customs clearance, the inventory, answering the telephone, writing up the orders, picking, packing and shipping and managing all of these functions. So we eliminate a huge number of costs and the chance that those books won't sell.

  Dan Poynter

  Ocean, Book, Writing

  "The Future Of Children's Books". "All Things Considered" with Mary Louise Kelly, www.npr.org. February 18, 2012.

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• Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs 'caelum non animum mutant': they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Country, Travel, Home

  "Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think".

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• They are at the end of the gallery; retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

  William Congreve

  Tea, Scandal, Ancient

  'The Double Dealer' (1694) act 1, sc. 1

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• Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

  Will Durant

  Broken Heart, Truth, Minorities

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• It's so easy to print in the Midwest. You're saving months in shipping and customs, so we have started printing a number of books there.

  Dave Eggers

  Book, Numbers, Midwest

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• Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

  Thomas Hardy

  Moral, Argument, Poet

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “The Hand Of Ethelberta”, p.26, Thomas Hardy

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• Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.

  William Hazlitt

  Prejudice, Able, Way

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.98

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• One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?

  Tom Hodgkinson

  People, Example, London

  "Idle thoughts" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. February 11, 2008.

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• Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

  Eric Hoffer

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Custom is the great guide to human life.

  David Hume

  Guides, Human Life, Humans

  Terence Penelhum, David Hume (1992). “David Hume: an introduction to his philosophical system”, Purdue Univ Pr

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• We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah

  Wall, Evil, House

  Speech at a meeting of the Muslim University Union, Aligarh, March 10, 1944.

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• Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Marriage, Wind, Weather

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• The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Men, Law, Society

  "The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues". Book by Chaz Bufe, p. 26, 1992.

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• Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

  Walter Lippmann

  Age, Taught, Insight

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.482, Harvard University Press

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• The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

  John Stuart Mill

  Advancement, Standing Alone, Despotism

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.70, Cambridge University Press

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