Customs Quotes - Page 35

• Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Government, Hands, Law

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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs-in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.

  William Wordsworth

  Passion, Law, Differences

  William Wordsworth (1837). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Together with a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England, Now First Published with His Works ...”, p.502

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In each human heart terror survives The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear All that they would disdain to think were true: Hypocrisy and custom make their minds The fanes of many a worship, now outworn. They dare not devise good for man's estate, And yet they know not that they do not dare.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1853). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.201

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The soul is subject to health and disease, just as is the body. The health and disease of both . . . undoubtedly depend upon beliefs and customs, which are peculiar to mankind.

  Maimonides

  Soul, Peculiar, Body

  18 Copy quote

• I could show how largely our laws and customs are based upon the laws of Moses and the teachings of Christ; how constantly the Bible is appealed to as the guide of life and the authority in questions of morals... Add a volume of unofficial declaration to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

  David Josiah Brewer

  Christian, Religious, Teaching

  4 Copy quote

• The laws of custom make our [returning a visit] necessary. O how I hate this vile custom which obliges us to make slaves of ourselves! to sell the most precious property we boast, our time;--and to sacrifice it to every prattling impertinent who chooses to demand it!

  Fanny Burney

  Time, Hate, Sacrifice

  4 Copy quote

• Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature, the result of what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

  John Daly

  Fall, Expectations, Resistance

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Integrity, Work, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.238

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Free competition exists inside shelters of law, custom, insurance, political approval, and carefully protected status.

  Mason Cooley

  Law, Political, Competition

  5 Copy quote

• These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.

  Herbert Read

  Feelings, Favors, Conformity

  "Collected Poems". Book by Herbert Read, 1926.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Notable American Women gives us, with great panache and in eerie detail, a world that is cruelly reasonable within the near-religious limitations of its weird laws and customs. It is a book as unique as it is wonderfully strange.

  Gilbert Sorrentino

  Religious, Book, Unique

  4 Copy quote

• Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue. You don't have to make the case for what you believe. If somebody announces that it is part of his faith, the rest of society, whether of the same faith, or another, or of none, is obliged, by ingrained custom, to "respect" it without question; respect it until the day it manifests itself in a horrible massacre like the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the London or Madrid bombings.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Believe, Islam

  6 Copy quote

• It would truly be a fine thing if men suffered themselves to be guided by reason, that they should acquiesce in the true remonstrances addressed to them by the writings of the learned and the advice of friends. But the greater part are so disposed that the words which enter by one ear do incontinently go out of the other, and begin again by following the custom. The best teacher one can have is necessity.

  Francois de la Noue

  Teacher, Writing, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Whatever may be the laws and customs of a country, women always give the tone to morals. Whether slaves or free, they reign, because their empire is that of the affections.

  Aime Martin

  Country, Law, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power.

  John Money

  Tolerance, Reason, Social

  "Homosexuality: Bipotenitality, Terminology, and History" by John Money,

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Custom, which diminishes the intense, increases the moderate, pleasures.

  Andrew Michael Ramsay

  Intense, Pleasure, Increase

  6 Copy quote

• He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Mistake, Vanity, Self

  "Lasker's Manual of Chess". Book by Emanuel Lasker, Published in New York: Dover, p. 338, 1960.

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm trapped in a fun-house mirror reflection of a historical society where everyone was crazy by default, driven mad by irrational laws and meaningless customs.

  Charles Stross

  Fun, Crazy, Reflection

  Charles Stross (2006). “Glasshouse”, p.88, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The requirements of health, and the style of female attire which custom enjoins, are in direct antagonism to each other.

  Abba Louisa Goold Woolson

  Health, Style, Female

  4 Copy quote

• Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Wise, Law, May

  Benjamin Disraeli (earl of Beaconsfield.) (1882). “Selected speeches, ed. by T.E. Kebbel”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.

  Robert E. Howard

  Civilization, Mazes, Precedence

  Robert E. Howard (2006). “Kull: Exile of Atlantis”, p.95, Del Rey

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony declined with paganism,but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Religious, Atheist, Kissing

  4 Copy quote

• Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Sight, Names

  17 Copy quote

• There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.

  George Eliot

  Men, Race, Imagination

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6957, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why must I cling to the customs and practices of a particular country forever, just because I happened to be born there? What does it matter if its distinctiveness is lost? Need we be so attached to it? What's the harm if everyone on earth shares the same thoughts and feelings, if they stand under a single banner of laws and regulations? What if we can't be recognized as Indians any more? Where's the harm in that? No one can object if we declare ourselves to be citizens of the world. Is that any less glorious?

  Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

  Country, Law, Practice

  49 Copy quote