Quotes About Tradition

It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past and like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.

Ortodoxia înseamn? a nu gândi - a nu avea nevoie s? gândeÈ™ti. Ortodoxia înseamn? lipsa conÈ™tiinÈ›ei.

Their combined ages were two hundred and sixty-three years. None of them had ever been out of England, fought in a war, been in prison, ridden a horse, travelled in an aeroplane, got married, or given birth to a child. There seemed no reason why they should not continue in the same style until they died. Year in, year out, nothing ever happened in the Comstock family.

Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness

A hundred times in life, she declares, the good that one does seems to serve no immediate purpose; yet it maintains in one way and another the tradition of well wishing and well doing, without which all would perish.

la cérémonie des livrées.

Beau chou, disent-ils, vis et fleuris, afin que notre jeune mariée ait un beau petit enfant avant la fin de l'année; car si tu mourais trop vite ce serait signe de stérilité, et tu serais là-haut sur sa maison comme un mauvais présage.

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow.

We might think of a story as a kind of ceremony, like the Catholic Mass, or a coronation, or a wedding. We understand the heart of the Mass to be communion, the heart of a coronation to be the moment the crown goes on, the heart of the wedding to be the exchanging of the vows. All of those other parts (the processionals, the songs, the recitations, and so on) will be felt as beautiful and necessary to the extent that they serve the heart of the ceremony.

Afterward Freddie takes us to Trabanti's for lunch. Last year Trabanti died and three Vietnamese families went in together and bought the place, and it still serves pasta and pizza and the big oil of Trabanti is still on the wall but now from the kitchen comes this very pretty Vietnamese music and the food is somehow better.

Confucian rigour swept away the 'magical nonsense 'and Taoist liturgies of alchemical arts. None the less ,' if we now have powder metallurgy , beryllium alloys and liquid oxygen steel', this is owning to the Wizards ,not to the censorious apostles of common sense.

Those were comfortable, carefree years. The word I'd use now is idyllic. On Friday nights, we cheered on the Bulldogs of Midland High. On Sunday mornings, we went to church. Nobody locked their doors. Years later, when I would speak about the American Dream, it was Midland I had in mind.

America has an honored tradition of never leaving its soldiers on the battlefield—and we never should.

I took my time to arrive, entering the world only after my grandmother Dorothy Walker Bush administered a healthy dose of castor oil to Mother. (It was my first taste of the oil business.)

Common culture is in disrepute because many believe our Western tradition has promoted uniquely oppressive and imperialistic attitudes and practices. But it remains the case that no community can exist unless the people in it share important aspects of their lives in common.

Pierce was the first President to "affirm" rather than "swear" his oath. He was also the first to have memorized his inaugural speech.

Or from even further back, from as far back as she could remember, there rose the fascination she had felt as a little girl every time she saw her grandfather shaving: he would sit down, usually around seven in the morning, after a frugal breakfast, and with a serious air make up his lather with a very soft brush in a bowl of very hot water, a lather so thick and white and firm that even after more than seventy-five years it still made her mouth water.

Why, her father would turn in his grave--well, as a matter of fact, he was cremated, but what I mean is, if he hadn't been he would have. [Ermyntrude]

Dear Edward has given Fanny a chocolate-coloured coach with pale blue cushions. The wheat is picked out in blue. He held the sheet at arm's length. It seems strange, but no doubt Fanny is right. I have not been in England for such a time...Ah, I beg her pardon. You will be relieved to hear, my dear Hugh, that the wheat still grows as it ever did. The wheels are picked out in blue.

The Rector, coming into the room and learning what was the subject under discussion, said that since the world began each generation had condemned the manners and customs of the next.

Dear Papa, it seemed, had not left his family in affluent circumstances; but he had certainly endowed them with good looks, a commodity in which they had been bred from earliest youth to trade to the best advantage.

grandson characteristically. He found

Mrs Tallant crushed these budding hopes. 'Full dress, to be sure, my dear: satin, I daresay. Feathers, of course. I do not know if hoops are still worn at Court. Lady Bridlington is to make your sister a present of the dress, and I know I may depend upon her to choose just what is right. Come, my dears! If we are to call upon your uncle on our way home it is high time we were off!

A similar tradition on the creative power of letters forms the basis of the following midrash on Job 28:11.... This brings us to the text that played so important a part in the development of the golem concept: the Book of Yetsirah or the Book of Creation.... We do not know the exact date of this enigmatic text,.... We can only be sure that it was written by a Jewish Neo-Pythagorean some time between the third and sixth century.