Quotes About Tradition

The author says the earliest Australian aborigines devoted extraordinary amounts of energy to enterprises no one now can understand.

If one's husband had been married before and widowed—a fairly common condition—and a close relative of his first wife's died, the second wife was expected to engage in "complementary mourning"—a kind of proxy mourning on behalf of the deceased earlier partner.

Not only were the Anglo-Saxons relatively uncultured, they were also pagan, a fact rather quaintly preserved in the names of four of our weekdays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which respectively commemorate the gods Tiw, Woden, and Thor, and Woden's wife, Frig. (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, to complete the picture, take their names from Saturn, the sun, and the moon.)

this is a little-known fact but absolute truth—that when they dedicate a new multistory car park, the Lord Mayor and his wife have a ceremonial pee in the stairwell? It's true.

Isn't it time we asked ourselves, are we willing to accept any behavior codified within religious or cultural practice? Is there no line to be drawn? If honor killings are okay, then why not virgin sacrifices or cannibalism or sex with children outside the church? We have perversely taken our notion of tolerance to such extremes that we've become tolerant of intolerance.

New Rule: Churches have to stop ringing the damn bells. It was a good idea in the Middle Ages, but people have clocks now. It's not like you're doing us all a favor by keeping the hunchbacks off the street. Make up your mind, are you a house of worship or an ice cream truck?

he intended to exploit as best he could the traditional rivalries, for that was one of the best things the league had going for it, genuine rivalries in which the players themselves participated. Those rivalries, Boston-Philly, New York–Baltimore, needed no ballyhoo; the athletes themselves were self-evidently proud and they liked nothing better than to beat their opponents

I'm a 21st-century kid trapped in a 19th-century family.

There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration.

Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, and walk therein.'

The art of opposition and of revolution is to unsettle established customs, sounding them even to their source, to point out their want of authority and justice.

No one has ever incurred martyrdom for miracles he claims to have seen; for, in the case of those which the Turks believe by tradition, human folly might go as far as martyrdom, but not for those actually seen.

It's east to see without lookin' too far that not much is really sacred.

Build me a cabin in Utah Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout Have a bunch of kids who call me "Pa" That must be what it's all about That must be what it's all about

My grandfather was a duck trapper He could do it with just dragnets and ropes My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along With all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves I left all my dreams and hopes Buried under tobacco leaves

It's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.

There is a tendency of one generation to run wild, break rules, enjoy itself, and then condemn those who come along next to give these indulgences a new spin.

A tradition that doesn't have to be an imitation of something but a continuation, a branching out more than anything. One would have to conceive of tradition as something living, something that's continually changing and enriching itself through that change.

All these twelve years of secondary school and university, Yura had studied classics and religion, legends and poets, the sciences of the past and of nature, as if it were all the family chronicle of his own house, his own genealogy.

Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?

and a couple of days later he sent Strange a haggis (a sort of Scotch pudding) as a present.

Tutti erano ammaliati dall'idea del progresso e credevano che qualsiasi cosa nuova dovesse essere superiore a ciò che era vecchio. Come se il merito fosse una funzione della cronologia!

He is Englishness carried to perfection

The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man.