Customs Quotes - Page 36

• Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.

  David Eddings

  Fashion, People, Costumes

  David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (1997). “Polgara the Sorceress”, Del Rey

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• Culture changes, fashions change, customs change. Great music is immortal.

  Michael Jackson

  Fashion, Culture, Great Music

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• RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Religious, Oil, Law

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.203, University of Georgia Press

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• Perhaps no custom reveals our character as a Nation so clearly as our celebration of Thanksgiving Day.

  Ronald Reagan

  Thanksgiving, Character, Celebration

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.

  James M. Barrie

  Thinking, Hands, House

  James M. Barrie (2013). “The Little White Bird (Annotated Edition)”, p.115, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

  Samuel Johnson

  Names, Giving, Needs

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• Nothing is more detestable to the physical anthropologist than... the wretched habit of cremating the dead. It involves not only a prodigal waste of costly fuel and excellent fertilizer, but also the complete destruction of physical historical data. On the other hand, the custom of embalming and mummification is most praiseworthy and highly to be recommended.

  Earnest Hooton

  Hands, Data, Historical

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• If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Atheist, Ignorance, Men

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• When we want to infuse new ideas,
  to modify or better the habits and customs of a people,
  to breathe new vigor into its national traits,
  we must use the children as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with adults.

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Ideas, People

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• We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Knowing, People, Effort

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• Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

  Philip K. Dick

  Matter, Way, Habit

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• Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and move to broader deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change the world.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Moving, Law, People

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• USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Hope, Fashion, Book

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.229, 谷月社

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• This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the fields of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thresh and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.

  Jean Froissart

  Home, Mean, Cutting

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• To-day the woman is Mrs. Richard Roe, to-morrow Mrs. John Doe, and again Mrs. James Smith according as she changes masters, and she has so little self-respect that she does not see the insult of the custom.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Self, Doe, Littles

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2012). “The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective”, p.73, Courier Corporation

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• How do you get on with your father ' Beleth asked. 'Very well ' Pyrgus answered loyally although it was far from the truth. 'I ate mine ' Beleth told him. 'He got old and feeble and useless but he wanted to hold on to power. So I took steps. Tasted disgusting - stringy tough smelly ... you know how fathers are - but it's the custom here. You're supposed to absorb the essence that way. Rank superstition of course but well ... tradition.

  Herbie Brennan

  Father, Essence, Useless

  Herbie Brennan (2011). “Faerie Wars”, p.167, A&C Black

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• The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Life, Dream, Prayer

  Idylls of the King "The Passing of Arthur" l. 408 (1869) See Bailey 1; George H. W. Bush 7; George H. W. Bush 10; George H. W. Bush 12; Martin Luther King 1

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• The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

  John Stuart Mill

  Choices, Feelings, Perception

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.59, Cambridge University Press

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• Old custom is hard to break and scarce any man will be led otherwise than seemeth good unto himself.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Men, Tradition, Break

  Thomas a Kempis (1913). “The Imitation of Christ”

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• But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.

  Mark Twain

  Truth, Believe, Mind

  Mark Twain (2012). “Autobiographical Writings”, p.201, Penguin

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• Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more dire cases, punished. Then there would be the phase where she would have to sharpen her senses in order to see and hear as acutely as possible so that she could assimilate quickly all the new customs and the words most frequently used by the group she was to become a part of--so that finally, she would be judged on her own merits.

  Laura Esquivel

  Order, Groups, Would Be

  Guillermo Arriaga, F. G. Haghenbeck, Reyna Grande, Laura Esquivel, Javier Valdes (2013). “Atria Español Presents: The Best of Mexican Literature”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

  William Shakespeare

  Angel, Devil, Monsters

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 4, l. 160

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• In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Philosophy, Men, Two

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• Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

  Harriet Martineau

  Law, Creative, Vices

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.168

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• Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

  Alberto Moravia

  Law, Custodians, Generations

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