Quotes About Tradition

Americans think we Brits drink tea because we're polite and genteel or something, whereas we really drink it because it's a stimulant and it's hot enough to sterilize cholera bacteria.)

Executions are a form of human sacrifice, after all

This is rural England, after all; please set your watch back thirty years 

Olga noticed Mirium looking at her blankly. 'Don't you pray?' she asked. 'Pray?' Mirium shook her head. 'I don't understand - ' 'Prayers! Oh, yes, I forgot. Didn't dear Roland say that on the other side everybody is pagan? You all worship some dead god on a stick, impaled or something disgusting, and pray in English,' she said with relish.

I am asking Julius to explain, I said, why his people are so partial to chickens.

Scions of old families who've hit the skids do like to flaunt their illustrious ancestors....

My dad's funeral was one of those instances when you're reminded of what it means to show up for people. The tradition

Why do people show up—if not out of decency, and tradition?

The woven belt once worn around the waist by both men and women symbolized the participation of individuals in society, their place in the community, and the agreement to be, quite literally, bound by its rules. When the reverse was practised, taking off one's belt signified a readiness to enter the realm of the spirits. For women, the power could be amplified by unbraiding their hair, as mentioned above.

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

The world is large," said Okonkwo. "I have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family." "That cannot be," said Machi. "You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. It has not always been so, he said. My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.

He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days..

An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten

He who brings kola brings life.

I do not know how to thank you.' 'I can tell you,' said Obierika. 'Kill one of your sons for me.' 'That will not be enough,' said Okonkwo. 'Then kill yourself,' said Obierika.

A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.

Igbo sayings and proverbs are far more valuable to me as a human being in understanding the complexity of the world than the doctrinaire, self-righteous strain of the Christian faith I was taught.

When you have paid a hundred and thirty pounds bride-price and you are only a second-class clerk, you find you haven't got any more to spare on other women.

How can a man who has killed five men in a battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their family number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.

Okonkwo was ruled by one passion -- to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

La vida de un hombre desde el nacimiento hasta la muerte era una serie de ritos de paso que le acercaban cada vez más a sus antepasados.