Quotes About Tradition

If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.

Someday," Lillian said grumpily, huddling against his powerful chest, "you'll have to explain why men find it such an unholy joy to go outside before it's light, and wander through muddy fields to kill small animals." "Because we like to test ourselves against nature. And more importantly, it gives us an excuse to drink before noon." -Lillian & Marcus

Do you know the motto on the Ravenel coat of arms?" "Loyalté nous lie." "Do you know what it means?" "'Never make us angry?'" Pandora guessed, and was rewarded by his deep laugh. "Actually, I do know," she said. "It means 'loyalty binds us.'" "That's right," Devon said.

Do I have to take a knee when I ask her?" Ryan asked."No, but it's traditional." Ryan rubbed the lower half of his jaw, clearly not liking the idea. "Men used to kneel when they were being knighted," Sofia pointed out."Or beheaded," Ryan said darkly.

He stared at her steadily. "If we were eating Gypsy-style, sitting before a fire, I would offer you the choicest bites of meat. The soft inside of the bread. The sweetest sections of fruit.

By being the master of the house. Back in America the woman is the ruler of the home, but in England everything revolves around the man.

There are three things that everyone expects of an aristocrat," the valet replied, tugging firmly at the pig's collar. "A country house, and a weak chin, and eccentricity.

Romany Gypsies—the Rom, they call themselves—are a nomadic people. They dislike staying under one roof too long. It makes them feel imprisoned

From what I've seen so far," Devon remarked, "it would be far more sensible to set fire to this rotting heap of timber rather than to try and repair it." Kathleen's eyes widened. "Eversby Priory is historic. It's four hundred years old." "So is the plumbing, I'll wager.

it is necessary to act within but to think beyond our received humanist tradition and, all the while, to imagine a much more complicated set of stories about the emergence of the now, in which what is foreclosed as unknowable is forever saturating the "what-can-be-known." We are left with the project of visualizing, mourning, and thinking "other humanities" within this received genealogy of "the human.

If you had a guy who could carry you, why weren't women carried around all the time?

And often it would be a woman who was in her 70s or 80s who would win the beauty contest, because bound feet never age.

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.

If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?

He knew what he did because all Venetians knew it.

his name possibly handed down through generations like an heirloom—a coin or a favorite piece of jewelry—from long-dead ancestors who possessed no tokens to pass along, save for their names and their stories.

To my grandmothers, for tilling the soil in which we grew and for watering our roots with stories of all the old things

was their job to always hold tight to the past, to tell it to the young'uns.

I was raised that way too.

In those days men were the ones who usually conferred blessings. Yet here we have a woman proclaiming a blessing upon another woman. Wow. Even from the womb, Jesus was changing the culture.

No one could say the stories were useless for as the tongue clacked five or forty fingers stitched corn was grated from the husk pathwork was pieced or the darning was done... (from 'The Storyteller Poems')

Every family has one living patriarch or matriarch, the final arbiter and repository of ancient family history, and Nicole's Aunt Patti was the last woman standing.

All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful.

We stand around the tray. Just staring at it. Forever in awe. The chicken fried steak will be just as she remembered it. The biscuits will flake just like they used to. The pecan pie will be sweet and will take her back to those times she sat at the tables just outside the shack on a summer's day. And for once, she'll have fresh strawberry ice cream to go with it.