Quotes About Tradition

The lesson Scott taught the modern world was that the past does not have to die or vanish: it can live on, in a nation's memory, and help to nourish its posterity.

In truth, a good master mason could build an entire Gothic cathedral with just a compass and a T square, a device he borrowed from Greek mathematicians for lining up perfect vertical and horizontal lines. This dazzling command of practical geometry made the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages truly independent businessmen. By the fourteenth century, they were already calling themselves free masons.

Using one's eyes and ears and sense of touch to diagnose ailments and complaints, and judge the course of a disease or its cure, was in a sense a family tradition. According to the great Greek doctor Galen,‡ Asclepid families also taught their sons dissection.

The point of this book is that being Scottish is more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it.

Thou shalt not covet, but traditionApproves all forms of competition.

De hoop van de ouden vergaat in rook zodat hun jongen wolken hebben om hun eigen luchtkastelen op te bouwen.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.

Because of the hand, the sign of the mano in fica. That gesture is now only used by Italians.

Split a young ash sapling a few feet down its trunk. At sunrise, pass the child through the cleft, three to nine times, against the sun. Then bind the tree and plaster the fissure with mud or clay. If the tree fares well, so will the child.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.

Where there's tea there's hope.

Reunión de pastores, decía el antiguo refrán español, oveja muerta.

Las mujeres iban con velo y estaban casi tan fastidiadas como ahora; y los fanáticos eran, como siguen siendo, igual de fanáticos, lleven crucifijo o media luna.

Gibraltareño de padre maltés y madre inglesa, o sea, tradición pirata total.

Si Felipe IV se hubiera puesto al frente de los viejos y gloriosos tercios y hubiera recobrado Holanda, vencido a Luis XIII de Francia y a su ministro Richelieu, limpiado el Atlántico de piratas y el Mediterráneo de turcos, invadido Inglaterra, izado la cruz de San Andrés en la Torre de Londres y en la Sublime Puerta, no habría despertado tanto entusiasmo entre sus súbditos como el hecho de matar un toro con personal donaire...

nada menos que con tres reyes al frente, en un tiempo en el que los reyes se la jugaban en el campo de batalla, y no casándose con lady Di o cayéndose en los escalones del bungalow mientras cazaban elefantes.

establecimientos públicos de moral relajada o equívoca, que en aquella España paradójica, singular e irrepetible, se veían tan frecuentados como las iglesias, y a menudo por la misma gente.

There are two people in the world whom you cannot refuse anything. Your mother. Your mother's mother. Period.

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion.

A gentleman does not openly work for pay, does he?

I don't really believe in rules, but I do like old-fashioned dating where you don't call the guy until he calls you. I don't think it's like he's got to do this and that's the rule.

Culture has tremendous inertia," he said. "That's why it's culture. It works because it lasts. Culture strangles innovation in the crib.

Religious ceremonial nowadays provides less opportunity for bad language and sexual symbolism.

The dead govern the living.