Quotes About Tradition

They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology!

In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.

bread pudding that Rosie had

Where would we be without it, memory? Well, it'll never die here. Never in this country. We feed it too well.

But I would submit that even messianism, even false messianism, is more Jewish a discipline than history

Imagine taking home this beautiful young paleskinned blackhaired late-model Jewess. Into fitness, healthy living. Raised good in better Yonkers. Mother a Hebrew School teacher, which means for her a traditional education.

Same church, different assumptions.

the generations broken, the family broken, to be repaired like a dropped pot or snarled ark of reeds, that unshakeable Jew belief in continuity, narrative, plot, in plopping myself in creaky unreclinable chairs around tables of prickly leaves to commiserate through recitation: flight into Egypt, plagues, flight out of Egypt, desert and plagues—a travail so repeated without manumission that it becomes its own travail, and so the tradition is earned.

I never did anything on game night, even though I recorded the games and could always watch them later, because those nights were sacrosanct, and if I gave up the one sacrosanct thing, where would I be and what would I have?

Sure, the Roman Catholic Church is an abomination to man and a disgrace to God, but it comes with a highly structured Mass, several sacred pilgrimages, the oldest songs, the most impressive architecture, and a whole bunch of things to do whenever you enter the church. Taken all together, they make you one with your brother.

Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.

Well, that started me on the path out. I realized my religious tradition couldn't account for everything, not even everything sacred.

The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of thought and belief a logical next step.

As late as 1820, families made three quarters of all goods—food, clothing, tools—for their own use.

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.

The women congregated in the kitchen or, in warm weather, sat in rocking chairs on the shady porches. The few men present squatted and talked in the yard or sat on a porch on the opposite side of the house.

Como se sabe, los Borbones ni aprenden, ni olvidan.

Nunca ha dejado de extrañarme, por eso, que el vínculo más cercano del boom latinoamericano, dentro de la tradición de nuestra lengua, se remonte a esas narraciones que surgieron del Descubrimiento, y en muchos casos —pensemos en la lealtad que Vargas Llosa y García Márquez siempre le han jurado a la novela de caballerías, uno a Tirant le Blanc, y el otro a Amadís de Gaula— a momentos anteriores.

Sin haber crecido en un entorno católico preconciliar donde la culpa aparece antes que el pecado.

Victoria Ocampo era por cierto una oligarca, pero no todas las oligarcas eran Victoria Ocampo. Las damas de la alta sociedad, como se decía entonces, no empleaban su dinero y su tiempo en la difusión de las letras ni abrazaban la causa del feminismo ni transgredían costumbres establecidas, ni se animaban a proclamar su agnosticismo; nada tenían en común con Victoria

Los pueblos sin tradición están abocados a la soledad más hosca

Los progresistas son la vanguardia que avanza abriendo brecha; los conservadores la retaguardia que consolida los avances

Las religiones fundan las civilizaciones, que a su vez mueren cuando apostatan de la religión que las fundó

Nadie tiene derecho a derribar de un capirotazo lo que las generaciones previas erigieron con infinito esfuerzo: porque en el esfuerzo de esas generaciones hay mucho amor insomne, muchos sacrificios ímprobos, muchas lágrimas vertidas, muchos júbilos compartidos