Quotes About Tradition

I cannot think of any writer of stature in English who has not shown a knowledge of the Bible.

this land has relied on masquerade for millennia

eating together is an occasion that humans have made into a peacemaking ritual;

Frida is a detour and a distraction. It was her genius as an artist, and her neurotic narcissism, to turn her whole self into art—her love, her suffering, her accident-prone life—and in the process make herself an icon, for the Mexican tradition is full of icons, especially of madonnas.

The trains in any country contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Ceylonese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar.

I often had the feeling that it was the old immemorial Confucian family that had kept China orderly. Mao had attacked the family-the Cultural Revolution was intentionally an assault on the family system, when children were told to rat on their bourgeois parents. But that had faltered and failed. The family had endured

But I wondered about the noise and roistering: what had this cacophony and masquerade to do with the Day of the Dead?

The Days of the Dead was just such a fiesta. It was a solemn ritual, it was a vigil in graveyards, it was a masquerade, it was a binge, it was an occasion for dressing up and looking fabulous, it included political protest, and it was a party.

In India, the past refuses to die, undisturbed by new realities.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

As you know, six nights a week we gather together to sing songs we know and love, to dance, to escape our daily lives. But on the seventh night … God created Yiddish theater.

There was a time when people accepted magical experiences as natural. There were no priests then, and no one went chasing after the secrets of the occult.

I'm an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There's one that says, 'Everything that happens once can never happen again. But anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

They were so ignorant, so naive, so resigned to their lot. They refused to believe anything that didn't fit in with what they were used to believing.

It is imposible to understand sex as we see it nowadays - a mere response to a few physical stimuli. In reality, it is far more than that, and carries with it man's and humanity's entire cultural burden. Each time we face a new experience, we bring with us all past experiences - both good and bad - as well as those concepts which civilization has made into rules.

Some things are governed by common sense. Putting buttons on the front of a shirt is a matter of logic, since it would be very difficult to button them up at the side, and impossible if they were at the back. "Other things, however, become fixed because more and more people believe that's the way they should be. I'll give you two examples. Have you ever wondered why the keys on a typewriter are arranged in that particular order?

The established religions no longer ask fundamental questions about our identity and our reason for living. Instead, they concentrate purely on a series of dogmas and rules concerned only with fitting in with a particular social and political organization. People in search of real spirituality are, therefore, setting off in new directions, and that inevitably means a return to the past and to primitive religions, before those religions were contaminated by the structures of power.

if you're not in touch with your roots, you feel as if you've lost touch with the world

The Tradition of the Sun belongs to all—it wasn't made for the erudite or the pure but for everyday people. Energy is to be found in the tiniest things man encounters in his path; the world is the true classroom, the Love Supreme knows you are alive and will teach you all you need to know.

Each movement during combat honors the movements that the previous generations tried to transmit through the Tradition.

Guys name their kettlebells like they name their guns. They paint them with their units' coats of arms. They get tattoos of kettlebells. The Russian kettlebell is the Harley-Davidson of weights.

Heavy kettlebells are traditionally called "bulldogs. "Heavy" is in the eye of the beholder; we usually dump the bells heavier than 32 kilograms in that category. 48 kilograms is as heavy as traditional kettlebells go, but it does not stop Russia's strongest from going heavier. Weightlifting legend Yuri Vlasov was heartbroken when someone stole his custom-made 56-kilogram kettlebells.

It was Wang Lung's marriage day.

For generations fathers had watched earth and sea.