Customs Quotes - Page 26

• Nigel gave the lamp a cautious buff and small smoking red letters appeared in the air. "Hi," Nigel read aloud, "Do not put down the lamp because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity."

  Terry Pratchett

  Nice, Air, Smoking

  4 Copy quote

• What is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by authority.

  Saint Augustine

  Church, Matter, Authority

  6 Copy quote

• The customs of God's people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God.

  Saint Augustine

  Law, People, Church

  4 Copy quote

• The mere change of custom, even though it may be of advantage in some respects, unsettles men by reason of the novelty: therefore, if it brings no advantage, it does much harm by unprofitably disturbing the Church.

  Saint Augustine

  Men, Church, Doe

  Saint Augustine of Hippo (2016). “Saint Augustine of Hippo Collection [50 Books]”, p.5687, Aeterna Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is necessary to obey a Pope in all things as long as he does not go against the universal customs of the Church, but should he go against the universal customs of the Church, he need not be followed.

  Pope Innocent III

  Long, Church, Doe

  54 Copy quote

• For what concerns diversity of rites in the sacred liturgy, the Apostolic See has always made its position clear: not only it does not condemn diversity, but it eagerly and willingly grants to each nation the right to keep and preserve the legitimate customs and traditions of its forbears.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Diversity, Sacred, Doe

  7 Copy quote

• Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Stupid, Men, New Experiences

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.18, Cambridge University Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Law, Good Man

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.18, Cambridge University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suspicious.- To admit a belief merely because it is a custom - but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the preconditions for morality?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Lazy, Laziness

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.

  James Madison

  Rights, Names, America

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.57, Rowman & Littlefield

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes, by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute, tythe, tallage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name.

  Joseph Story

  Government, Names, Taxation

  16 Copy quote

• Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Tribes, Injustice, Sin

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.144, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one in my family had ever attended school [...] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea.

  Nelson Mandela

  Teacher, School, Names

  15 Copy quote

• There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Soul, Individuality

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.287

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Verse 11. (They presented unto Him gifts). The people of the east never approach the presence of kings and great personages, without a present in their hands. The custom is often noticed in the Old Testament, and still prevails in the east, and in some of the newly discovered South Sea Islands.

  Adam Clarke

  Kings, Sea, Islands

  Adam Clarke (2013). “Commentary on the New Testament”, p.38, Ravenio Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

  Samuel Daniel

  Art, Law

  'A Defence of Rhyme'

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be sure of the foundation of your life. Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, build an opinion or custom on what you guess is true. Make it a matter of certainty and science.

  Thomas Starr King

  Life, Giving, Foundation

  Thomas Starr King (1924). “Socrates: An Oration”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• America... where law and custom alike are based upon the dreams of spinsters...

  Bertrand Russell

  Dream, Law, America

  "Marriage and Morals".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only the scenario writers are exempt. These are tied between the tails of two spirited Caucasian ponies, which are then driven off in opposite directions. This custom is called a conference.

  S. J. Perelman

  Opposites, Two, Ponies

  "Strictly from Hunger". "The Most of S. J. Perelman", p. 47-48, 1992.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society

  Edward Burnett Tylor

  Art, Taken, Men

  Edward Burnett Tylor (2016). “Primitive Culture”, p.1, Courier Dover Publications

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.

  Washington Irving

  Morning, Book, Home

  Washington Irving (1843). “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq. (Wasington Irving)”, p.172

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... Jimmy Page bought a Les Paul because he liked mine, but it was stolen, so he bought a Standard everybody raved about .. that's what he's famous for, but his first Les Paul was a Custom like mine ... I can remember he played a Gretsch before that

  Albert Lee

  Music, Pages, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom.

  Brand Blanshard

  Men, Cake, Raisins

  11 Copy quote

• The only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs.

  A.J. Ayer

  Rights, Tolerance, Feelings

  48 Copy quote

• Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

  Thomas Sowell

  Men, Ninety Nine, Ideas

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, Basic Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source