Quotes About Tradition

Neither my father nor grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past. I remember hearing from my grandfather that he had once shipped a boatful of slaves as a cargo of rubber. He couldn't tell me when he had done this. It was just there in his memory, floating around, without date or other association, as an unusual event in an uneventful life.

There may be some part of the world – dead countries, or secure and by-passed ones – where men can cherish the past and think of passing on furniture and china to their heirs. Men can do that perhaps in Sweden or Canada.

We exchanged greetings, and in the African way we could make that take time.

When we had come no one could tell me. We were not that kind of people. We simply lived; we did what was expected of us, what we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why; we never recorded. We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time. Neither my father nor my grandfatehr could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past.

When we had come no one could tell me. We were not that kind of people. We simply lived; we did what was expected of us, what we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why; we never recorded. We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time. Neither my father nor my grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past.

Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

La otra anciana se llamaba Sa', que significa «estrella», porque su madre miraba el cielo nocturno de otoño, concentrada en las lejanas estrellas, para distraerse de los dolores del parto.

My grandmother and all those other elders from the past kept themselves busy until they could no longer move or until they died.

Stories are gifts given by an elder to a younger person. Unfortunately, this gift is not given, nor received, as often today because many of our youth are occupied by television and the fast pace of modern-day living.

In those days, leaving the old behind in times of starvation was not an unknown act, although in this band it was happening for the first time.

the migrating bands in these times preserved hot coals in hardened mooseskin sacks or birchbark containers filled with ash in which the embers pulsated, ready to spark the next campfire.

Saturday was general cleaning day in accordance with the rules laid down by the Foundress. Every nun, professed or lay, scrubbed down her cell, took her linen to the laundry room, made up her narrow bed with fresh sheets and changed her underwear for the second time in a week.

All the men I know add that "hands that prepared it" line. They must know it's right complimentary, an incentive to keep the women cooking.

Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.

To destroy abuses is not enough; Habits must also be changed. The windmill has gone, but the wind is still there. ~old man G--- to Monseigneur Bienvenu Myriel

He was Antinous, wild. You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already, in some preceding existence, been through the revolutionary apocalypse. He knew its tradition like an eyewitness. He knew every little detail of that great thing. A pontifical and warrior nature, strange in a youth. He was officiating and militant; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of democracy; above the movement of the time, a priest of the ideal.

There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.

To destroy abuses is not enough; habits must be changed.

It's not enough to abolish abuse; custom must also be transformed. The mill was pulled down, but the wind still blows.

Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.

He had given Cosette a dress of Binche lace that had come down to him from his own grandmother. "These fashions have come round again," he said, "old things are all the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood

Strange to say, at that epoch, people still imagined that a wedding was a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess, provided it be honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion of these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring, should begin at home, and that the household should thenceforth have its nuptial chamber as its witness. And

To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.

She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying: Father, you owe my husband affront for affront. The father asked: On which cheek did you receive the blow? On the left cheek. The father slapped her right cheek and said: Now you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter's ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife's.