Customs Quotes - Page 37

• The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of sport."

  Sinclair Lewis

  Sports, Baseball, Games

  Sinclair Lewis (2008). “Babbitt (Volume 1 of 2) (EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition)”, p.270, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering-no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Selfish, Thinking, People

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• There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again.

  Marcel Proust

  Grief, Long, Sorrow

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• In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Community, Culture

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• A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humor, Law

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.230, Courier Corporation

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• Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Ties, Remember, Tradition

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement - at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist. Only, instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, it demands it from the continued action of all.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Animal, Agreement, Law

  "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal". Book by Peter Kropotkin, 1898.

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• Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

  Mark Twain

  Tired, Reason, Forbidden

  "The Gorky Incident". Essay by Mark Twain, 1906.

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• Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl, When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.

  John Milton

  Sleep, Light, Earth

  John Milton (1853). “The Poetical Works of John Milton”, p.118

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• It is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes.

  Julius Caesar

  Punishment, Long, May

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• The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it.

  David Hume

  Running, Men, Order

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.180

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• Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.

  David Hume

  Past, Experience, Principles

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.29, Hackett Publishing

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• In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Evil, Vices

  Thomas Hobbes (2014). “Behemoth or The Long Parliament”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

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• In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.

  Camille Paglia

  Law, Civilization, Tyrants

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae”, p.128, Yale University Press

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• The tide of immigration in Canada has not been as great as along our frontier. They have been able to allow the Indians to live as Indians, which we have not, and do not attempt to force upon them the customs which are distasteful to them.

  Nelson A. Miles

  Immigration, Able, Canada

  Nelson A. Miles (1992). “Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles, Embracing a Brief View of the Civil War, Or, From New England to the Golden Gate and the Story of His Indian Campaigns with Comments on the Exploration, Development, and Progress of Our Great Western Empire”, p.345, U of Nebraska Press

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• Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Jim Crow Laws, Groups

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.13, The New Press

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• What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.

  Irene Nemirovsky

  Law, Knives, People

  Irène Némirovsky (2006). “Suite Française: Storm in June”, Vintage

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• This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Rights, People, Evil

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.104, Penguin

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• Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

  Winston Churchill

  Math, Logic, Poor

  Winston Churchill (1986). “Closing the Ring”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• How do cultures differ from one another? Above all, in their customs. Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor, and I will tell you who you are. Man not only creates culture, he carries it around with him. Man is culture.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Men, Honor, Dresses

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2009). “Travels with Herodotus”, p.80, Vintage

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• There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

  George Santayana

  Passion, Sacred, Way

  George Santayana (1945). “The Middle Span”

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• The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.

  George Washington

  Mean, Law, People

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• I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stupid, Believe, Men

  "The Illustrated London News" Magazine, June 3, 1922.

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• If we look round the world, there seem to be not above six distinct varieties in the human species, each of which is strongly marked, and speaks the kind seldom to have mixed with any other. But there is nothing in the shape, nothing in the faculties, that shows their coming from different originals; and the varieties of climate, of nourishment, and custom, are sufficient to produce every change.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Science, Looks, World

  Oliver Goldsmith (1823). “A history of the earth, and animated nature”, p.2

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• It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.

  Chris Patten

  Tribes, Language, Affair

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