Quotes About Tradition

Being a witch is a man's job: that's why it needs women to do it.

And in this doleful mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here to stay. Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a fangler?

The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.

The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away.

Why? Why not do things differently? Why should we do things how they have always been done before? And something inside her suddenly thrilled to the challenge.

WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.

One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.

The best man. You know? He hands you the ring and has to marry the bride if you ran away and so on. The Dean's been reading up on it, haven't you, Dean? Oh, yes, said the Dean, who'd spent all the previous day with Lady Deirdre Waggon's Book of Etiquette. She's got to marry someone once she's turned up. You can't have unmarried brides flapping around the place, being a danger to society. I completely forgot about a best man! said Vimes.

I've been following the noble profession of hermiting here for nigh on fifty-seven years, practising piety, sobriety, celibacy and the pursuit of true wisdom in the tradition of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather before me.

At times like this it's traditional that a hero comes forth, said the President of the Guild of Assassins. A dragon slayer. Where is he, that's what I want to know? Why aren't our schools turning out young people with the skills society needs?

it wasn't the wearing of the hat that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat.

It's witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is ALL crusts.

mother, thought Claire, cannot knight her own son. It must be done by another man.

I came for midnight Mass, didn't I? He gave a weary laugh, Everyone shows up at Christmas. Even the ones who don't believe.

Catgut is a type of surgical thread made from the intestines of cows or sheep." "So why do they call it catgut?" asked Rizzoli. "It goes back to the Middle Ages, when gut strings were used on musical instruments. The musicians referred to their instruments as their kit, and the strings were called kitgut. The word eventually became catgut.

Family values meant keeping your head down and your voice soft. It meant having dinner on the table by six and your paycheck in his hand every other Friday. It meant keeping secrets that at any time might explode in your face.

When we are caught in notions, rituals, and the outer forms of the practice, not only can we not receive and embody the spirit of our tradition, we become an obstacle for the true values of the tradition to be transmitted. We lose sight of the true needs and actual suffering of people, and the teaching and practice, which were intended to relieve suffering, now cause suffering. Narrow, fundamentalist, and dogmatic practices always alienate people, especially those who are suffering.

When you touch someone who authentically represents a tradition, you not only touch his or her tradition, you also touch your own.

In Asia, when people kiss each other they use the nose more than the mouth. Using the nose, we can recognize the person; it's so pleasant.

For dialogue to be fruitful, we need to live deeply our own tradition and, at the same time, listen deeply to others. Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others' tradition.

Luc explained that the woodworking tradition was firmly established in Germany from the Middle Ages, and that guilds and families regularly replanted trees in order to provide the right kind of wood for their descendants.

What had been urban and cosmopolitan in old Burma had vanished. And what was modern in the new Burma was alien. When the British quit and the Indians were forced to go, only village Burma would remain.

If they were to eliminate all those who were homosexually oriented, the number would be so staggering that it would be like an atomic bomb. It would do the same damage to the Church's operation," Sipe said. "And it's very much against the tradition of the Church. Many saints had a gay orientation. And many popes had gay orientations. Discriminating against orientation is not going to solve the problem.