Quotes About Tradition

From the cultic point of view, the consequences were not fundamentally alien to tradition. Oaths were sworn by the genius of the master, and just as that of the paterfamilias was honoured in domestic lararia, henceforward Augustus's 'Genius' had his place in private chapels. But the veiled genius, who exemplified piety with his patera for libations and promised happiness with his horn of plenty, was often replaced by the sovereign's picture.

In the early fifth century AD, Macrobius (S, 1, 16, 7) comments that the Claudii, Aemilii, Julii and Cornelii still had their own ritual festivals. There were others which each family celebrated 'according to the tradition of domestic solemnities'. We know nothing about the special sacra of the Aemilii or Cornelii, though it is known that the Julii paid special honour to Apollo and Venus, but evidence of this devotion appeared belatedly and not without some political ulterior motive.

Their hands bathed in purifying water, the family members gathered up the calcined bones in the folds of their black garments, then sprinkled them with wine and milk, dried them with fine linen before enclosing them in a marble urn (Tib., 3, 2, 16-22). In memory of the time when burial was performed, a finger severed before the body was burnt was buried separately, and a handful of earth was thrown three times on this os resectum.

As it is for us, 1 January was a day of good wishes and new year's gifts, when only words of good omen had to be spoken

With the ashes of calf embryos burnt at the Fordicidia, horse blood and bean stalks, they also concocted the mixture for the purifying fumigations (suffimina).

As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking of what my architect's books say about the custom in early times to consecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, being finished sometimes half a century later, often did not get any blessing at all: I

Acting out of obligation, form or tradition is deadly, because giving up one's ability to act out of free choice is equivalent to giving up life itself.

The Chukchee, a people indigenous to Siberia, had their own special way of dealing with unruly winds. A Chukchee man would chant, "Western Wind, look here! Look down on my buttocks. We are going to give you some fat. Cease blowing!" The nineteenth-century European visitor who reported this ritual described it as follows: "The man pronouncing the incantation lets his breeches fall down, and bucks leeward, exposing his bare buttocks to the wind. At every word he claps his hands.

There were the usual deaths, yes, those to be expected, people who started off celebrating and ended up killing each other, uncinematic deaths, deaths from the realm of folklore, not modernity: deaths that didn't scare anybody.

where Halder and Hans usually arrived first and had something to eat, perhaps sausage with a bit of sauerkraut.

Some would sing as they killed the bear, so that the bear, while dying, could say: "I like that song.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

We write a line we're especially proud of, and weeks later find it staring -no glaring - back at us from some stanza in George Herbert or Emily Dickinson. All poets have debts outstanding. It's how we learn; how we adore; we come to ourselves by putting those selves into the hands of masters. With experience we learn how to disguise our thefts (sometimes by flaunting them). It is how we both continue and extend a tradition. -J.D. McClatchy, Writing Between the Lines

It's an old tradition or perhaps a superstition. Never call something by its true name if you wish to avoid calling its attention to you. Perhaps

I bent and kissed his brow in farewell. And then, grasping the rightness of that foreign tradition, I named him as myself. For when I burned him, I knew I would be ending myself, as well. The man I had been would not survive this loss. "Good-bye, FitzChivalry Farseer.

change proves that you are still alive. Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die.

In the pit of her stomach she realized that everything she raged against on Saturday night-- the restrictions, rules, and guidelines-- was born of an ancient fervor. Every rule ever established, from the beginning of time, invited mutiny.

One of her nice dresses. What her mother meant was something more fashionable. Molly favored dark skirts and simple white blouses. Clothing that was practical and allowed her to move and breathe. Ruth Everton wanted her daughter in handsome suits with gathered flounces and lots of fringe, and a corset that laced her into the perfect S shape that fashion demanded. Forget breathing altogether.

Now the harpist and bard had taken their places under the roof of the three-sided booley house, and guests were wandering from the table to hear them play and sing.

We Irish were alone, of all countries, in this way of choosing our leaders. Everywhere else in the world 'tis a firstborn son who's heir to the title—in England, your primogeniture—and no questions asked. But tanaistry was how the Irish chiefs were made, and it had always served us well. Aside

Most congenial, the booleying life, though never as exciting as the sea. Sure

We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.

the most common model for ministry now is someone who is well married (preferably with children), respected, pious, and doesn't "cause trouble.

When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.