Quotes About Tradition

I threw my head back and smiled proudly to myself. And then I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts up. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents' wishes, but I would never forget myself.

I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.

Finish your coffee," I told her yesterday. "Don't throw your blessings away." "Don't be so old-fashioned, Ma," she told me, finishing her coffee down the sink. "I'm my own person." And I think, How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?

But I'll never forget. On the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, I take off all my bracelets. I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went. That was the day I was a young girl with my face under a red marriage scarf. I promised not to forget myself. How nice it is to be that girl again, to take off my scarf, to see what is underneath and feel the lightness come back into my body!

Japanese chase-away juice." And

I could finally see what was there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.

The women cannot go out except to go to church or to the bullfight, and even that is unusual. I consider it a very ugly custom, and if I couldn't go out as I wished, I would leave this country [Spain], if only because of that one custom of the inhabitants.

The Spaniard does not give his mind and soul to the woman! The Spaniard is the man who associates with man only in the building of a world.

All that is sacred and taboo in the world are meaningless.

We 'preserve' folk songs, at the same time that our way of life destroys the singer…we are proud of our museums, where we display the damning evidence of a way of life that we have made impossible.

The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, "mysteries," with "secrets" that are not merely "tricks of the trade" of economic value (like the so-much-abused European "patents"), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation

The Vanderbilt story somehow manages to be both unique and also, deeply, universally American.

The most beaten paths are certainly the surest, but do not hope to start much game on them.

They ate in religious silence, the corners of their mouths smeared with ricotta cream. Which, the rules say, must be removed with a slow, circular movement of the tongue.

Il catafero di Japichinu sarebbe andato a finire nello sbalanco di qualche chiarchiàro... No, il nonno sapeva quanto fosse religioso il nipoteddru. L'avrebbe fatto seppellire anonimamente in terra consacrata. Dintra il tabbuto di un altro.

Japichinu era picciotto religioso, come sosteneva il nonno Balduccio, tant'è vero che aveva persino un Patre spirituale. Solo che tanto il picciotto quanto il parrino scangiavano superstizione per religione.

E po', che dicivano l'antichi che bazzicavano con la sapienzia? Dicivano: Monaci e parrini sentici la missa e stòccaci li rini. Che veniva a significare che i parrini servivano solo per sentirci dire la santa messa, doppo si poteva spezzarci la schina.

Tell the story of your village. If you tell it well, you will have told the story of the world.

The beauty of a Jewish education is that you learn how to argue.

It happens all too often - people regret that their language and culture are being lost but at the same time decide not to saddle their own children with the chore of preserving them.

If two thousand five hundred languages are to be lost in the course of the twenty-first century, don't be in any doubt about what that means for us: in each of those two thousand five hundreds cases a culture will be lost.

It's true things can go on till you die. And people use the same old table, even though it's falling apart and it's been repaired and repaired, just because it was their grandmother's. That's how towns become ghost towns. It's how houses become junk stores. And I think it's how people get old.

Why do today's young men insist on marrying? Was this why we all threw stones at the police, for weddings

We like categories and clubs as much as we ever have, it's only that the ones we thought were inviolable turn out not to be, and others that we never imagined are taking their place.