Customs Quotes - Page 18

• Custom is, nevertheless, the greatest enchantress, and in a home one of the most benevolent of fairies. A wife was young, and becomes old; it is custom which hinders the husband from perceiving the change.

  Timothy Shay Arthur

  Husband, Home, Wife

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• Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Pain, Pleasure, Fortune

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.32

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• Surely it isn't illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.

  Ann Leckie

  People, Complaining, Human Nature

  "Ancillary Justice". Book by Ann Leckie, 2013.

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• So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Change, Doubt, Tradition

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden and Civil Disobedience”, p.103, Xist Publishing

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• In love affairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child - ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride.

  Anne Bronte

  Children, Wall, Heart

  Anne Bronte (2016). “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Diversion Illustrated Classics)”, p.105, Diversion Books

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• It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Art, Sacrifice, Technology

  "The Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz, as translated by Jane Zielonko, 1990.

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• I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Years, Hilarity, Language

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• The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.

  Gregory Bateson

  Wise, Law, People

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• When it comes to acid rain or oil spills or depleted fisheries or tainted groundwater or fluorocarbon propellants or radiation leaks or sexually transmitted diseases, national frontiers are simple irrelevant. Toxins don't stop for customs inspections and microbes don't carry passports. North America became a water and free-trade zone long before NAFTA loosened up the market in goods.

  Benjamin Barber

  Rain, Simple, Trade Zone

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• Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
  Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
  Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
  More free from peril than the envious court?

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Brother, Woods

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 1, l. 2

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• The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

  Adam Smith

  Character, Division Of Labor, Differences

  Adam Smith (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner”, p.7

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• Admitting the force of these contentions, nevertheless, the custom of meeting together in public assembly for the consideration of the most serious, the most exalted topics of human interest is too vitally precious to be lost.

  Felix Adler

  Together, Admitting, Topics

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• The Ethical Society, therefore, is like a Church in maintaining, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining the custom of public assemblies on Sunday.

  Felix Adler

  Sunday, Church, Maintaining

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• We think according to nature. We speak according to rules. We act according to custom.

  Francis Bacon

  Inspirational, Thinking, Action

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• The end goal of all of this striving is to live joyfully, and that there are often more direct ways of achieving this than conforming to rigid standards set by social custom.

  Martha Beck

  Standards Set, Goal, Way

  Martha Beck (2011). “Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic”, p.116, Harmony

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• The tendency to cruelty
  should be watched in
  children and if they
  incline to any such
  cruelty, they should be
  taught the contrary
  usage. For the custom
  of tormenting and killing
  other animals will, by
  degrees, harden their
  hearts even toward man.
  Children should from
  the beginning, be
  brought up in an
  abhorrence of killing or
  tormenting living
  beings.

  John Locke

  Children, Heart, Animal

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• America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.

  John Adams

  Religious, America, Political

  Adams, John Quincy (1914). “Writings of John Quincy Adams Volume 4”, p.209, Best Books on

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• Mercedes nursed a special grievance - the grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex pregorative, she made their lives unendurable.

  Jack London

  Brother, Sex, Husband

  Jack London (2017). “Jack London for Kids – Breathtaking Adventure Tales & Animal Stories (Illustrated Edition): Children’s Book Classics, Including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Jerry of the Islands, The Cruise of the Dazzler, Michael Brother of Jerry & Before Adam”, p.134, e-artnow

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• Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of the world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.

  Lord Byron

  Depth, World, Truth Is

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• Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

  Francis Bacon

  Mean, Men, Endeavor

  Francis Bacon (2016). “Essays”, p.91, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Custom is the principle magistrate of man's life.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Principles, Magistrates

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• When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.

  John Locke

  Fashion, Crafts, Sacred

  John Locke (1728). “Two Treatises of Government: In the Former the False Principles & Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer & His Followers, are Detected & Overthrown; the Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent & End of Civil Government”, p.49

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• For through the South the custom still commands The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands.

  Lord Byron

  Kissing, Hands, Gentleman

  LORD BYRON (1875). “DON JUAN”, p.136

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• To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

  Paul Goodman

  Powerful, Men, People

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153-154), 1956.

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• Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here.

  Voltaire

  Christian, Taken, Years

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