Quotes About Convention

The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in slavery.

We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.

The names of entities that have the power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity.

What runs so contrary to received wisdom is that it really is the male who is the aesthete while the woman is drawn to abstractions.

There is no such thing as liberty,' she heard the quiet, deep, dangerous voice of Don Ramón repeating. 'There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

They seemed so free, and were as a matter of fact so tangled and tied up, inside themselves. They seemed so dashing and unconventional, and were really so conventional, so, as it were, shut up indoors inside themselves. They looked like bold, tall young sloops, just slipping from the harbour, into the wide seas of life. And they were, as a matter of fact, two poor young rudderless lives, moving from one chain anchorage to another.

One may go against convention, but one must keep up tradition.

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Literary Ethics in 1838, Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning anecdote, all flock to their aid. What a beautiful thought. Stay with tradition and you ensure that you'll always be the same, but toss it aside, and the world is yours to use as creatively as you choose.

One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.

met in a harborside convention center in Vancouver to figure out how to save the world's exploding cities from disaster. The world had little inkling of the great recession slouching on the horizon, yet the prognosis was bleak. The problem? On the one hand, cities were pumping out most of the world's pollution and 80 percent

G. K. Chesterton described as "a taboo of tact or convention, whereby we are free to say that a man does this or that because of his nationality, or his profession, or his place of residence, or his hobby, but not because of his creed about the very cosmos in which he lives.

The people people have for friends You common sense appall But the people people marry Are the queerest folk of all.

...truth cannot overcome its old habit of being stranger than fiction.

Algernon: You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that...

Had Stephen been better acquainted with men and women, she would have been more satisfied with herself for being the first at the tryst. The conventional idea, in the minds of most women and of all men, is that a woman should never be the first. But real women, those in whom the heart beats strong, and whose blood can leap, know better. These are the commanders of men. In them sex calls to sex, all unconsciously at first; and men answer to their call, as they to men's.

Monroe also saved Tom Paine, whose revolutionary fervor had inspired him to become a French citizen and win a seat in the Convention. When Paine voted against executing King Louis XVI, however, Robespierre sent him to prison, where he languished in ever-deteriorating health until Monroe rescued him in November 1794, and brought him to La Folie to recuperate.

Lincoln's "campaign" for president ended how and where it began: in adamant silence, and in the same Illinois city to which he had so tenaciously clung since the national convention. Like the solar eclipse that had obscured the Illinois sun in July, Lincoln remained in Springfield, hidden in full view.

A dry little laugh at the grotesquerie of using this stock phrase. At having occasion to use it.

The "problem" is that Comic-Con is so damned successful. People who are there seem to have a wonderful time. The very size of it makes it exciting. Wherever you look, there's something exciting. The attendees are always looking around for a familiar face. It's either 'There's a movie star!' Or, 'There's a TV star!' Or, 'There's the guy who drew the Green Lantern!' It means so much to the fans. It makes them feel like they're where it's happening. It's like Woodstock.

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.

Murder' is the word for a group of crows, like a flock of geese or a herd of cows or a convention of orthodontists.

The Democratic Convention is $27 million in debt. They had to cancel the kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. A speedway is the perfect place for the Democratic Convention. You go around in circles, turn left every few seconds, and you end up right where you started.