Customs Quotes - Page 31

• The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Blow, Errors

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.71, Penguin

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Feelings, Doubt

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.124, Lulu.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favorable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage.

  Samuel Williams

  Men, Law, Degrees

  Samuel Williams (1809). “The Natural and Civil History of Vermont”, p.372

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  John Stuart Mill

  Order, Break Through, People

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.67, Cambridge University Press

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whether one becomes famous or not, you have to be reminded of people like Melville, who for the last thirty years of his life was completely unknown. He worked in a customs house and walked off to work as an anonymous person in this American culture.

  Frederic Tuten

  Years, People, House

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.

  Charles Dickens

  Night, Doctors, Two

  Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (2015). “Oliver Twist, Volume 2 (of 3) (Illustrations)”, p.48, RICHARD BENTLEY

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Real, Law, Long

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.318, UPNE

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.

  Kate Atkinson

  Children, Character, Thinking

  Kate Atkinson (2013). “Emotionally Weird: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Kids, Independent, Good Luck

  Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.45, A&C Black

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.

  William Shakespeare

  Law, Bird, Shapes

  'Measure for Measure' (1604) act 2, sc. 1, l. 1

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Men, Machines

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, p.24, Oscar Wilde

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can't see. So the fantasy corners of America seem so atmospheric because you 've pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books.

  Andy Warhol

  Dream, Art, Real

  "Andy Warhol: a retrospective".

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.

  Agnes Repplier

  Universality, Pledge

  Agnes Repplier (1904). “Compromises”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding?joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.

  Jane Austen

  Numbers, Enemy, Joining

  Jane Austen (2005). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.1089, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of custom: but of all of these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Simple, Knack, Illusion

  Thomas Carlyle (1871). “Works”, p.179

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

  Mark Twain

  Use, Periods, Term

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.403, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Honesty, Fear, Independent

  graf Leo Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude (1934). “The Works of Leo Tolstoy ...: On life and essays on religion, tr. by Aylmer Maude”

  386 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Fashion, People, Individuality

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

  Thomas Paine

  Pain, Thinking, Long

  Thomas Paine “Annotated Common Sense with English Grammar Exercises: by Thomas Paine (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.

  Herman Melville

  Lying, Men, Europe

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.186, Northwestern University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Women, Rights, Law

  Letter to Susan B. Anthony, 14 June 1860, in T. Stanton and H. Stanton Blaher (eds.) 'Elizabeth Cady Stanton' (1922) vol. 2

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Fall, Long, Way

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (2015). “EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS Ultimate Collection: 30+ Adventure Novels & Science Fiction Classics (Illustrated): The Tarzan Series, The Barsoom Series, The Pelucidar Series, Caspak Trilogy, The Mucker Trilogy, Lost World Novels, Fantastic Stories, Historical Novels and more”, p.418, e-artnow

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Action, Justified, Humans

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1970). “A Krutch Omnibus: Forty Years of Social and Literary Criticism”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?

  Richard Bach

  Hypocrisy, Tree, World

  7 Copy quote

• You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

  Mark Twain

  Travel, Society, Tourism

  Mark Twain (1976). “Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume II: (1877-1883)”, p.318, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source