Quotes About Tradition

Q'eeng had just attempted in the third dialect the traditional rightward schism greeting of "I offer you the bread of life," but his phrasing and accent had transmuted the statement into "Let us violate cakes together.

The only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don't even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.

They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)

But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American Males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove. Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know how.

That was a time when a man had the right to be burried by his own son an' a son had the right to burry his own father.

The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.

It was quite normal in that day for a man to use up three or four wives in a normal lifetime.

That is the way it is done, the way it has always been done. Frogs have every right to expect it will always be done that way.

Kino escuchó el leve romper de las olas de la mañana en la playa. Era estupendo...Kino volvió a cerrar los ojos y atendió a su música interior. Quiza sólo él hiciera eso, y quizá lo hiciera toda su gente. Los suyos habían sido una vez grandes creadores de canciones, hasta el punto de que todo lo que veían o pensaban o hacían u oían, se convertía en canción...

It was a bad day when three or four men were not standing around the forge, listening to Samuel's hammer and his talk. They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

Cyrus wanted a woman to take care of Adam. He needed someone to keep house and cook, and a servant cost money. He was a vigorous man and needed the body of a woman, and that too cost money- unless you were married to it. Within two weeks Cyrus had wooed, wedded, bedded, and impregnated her. His neighbors did not find his action hasty. It was quite normal in that day for a man to use up three or four wives in a normal lifetime. p.19

You're jest a-teasin' yourself up to cry. I don' know what's come at you. Our folks ain't never did that. They took what come to 'em dry-eyed.

Swedes up in Dakota—know what they do sometimes? Put pepper on the floor. Gits up the ladies' skirts an' makes 'em purty lively—lively as a filly in season. Swedes do that sometimes." In

The names of places carry a charge of the people who named them.

Cyrus wanted a woman to take care of Adam. He needed someone to keep house and cook, and a servant cost money. He was a vigorous man and needed the body of a woman, and that too cost money—unless you were married to it. Within two weeks Cyrus had wooed, wedded, bedded, and impregnated her. His neighbors did not find his action hasty. It was quite normal in that day for a man to use up three or four wives in a normal lifetime.

For some reason he remembered the Mexican name for carnations. Somebody must have told him when he was a kid. They were called Nails of Love ---and marigolds , the Nails of Death. It was a word lie nails---claveles. Maybe he'd better put marigolds on his mothers grave.

You must know that a Chinese must pay all of his debts on or before our New Year's day. He starts every year clean. If he does not, he loses face; but not only that—his family loses face. There are no excuses.

He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scares 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im.

People didn't really believe in war even while they planned it. The Salinas Valley lived about as it always had.

Grampa an' the old place, they was jus' the same thing.

The lore had not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.

The church supper is the grandfather of the country club, just as the Thursday poetry reading in the basement under the vestry sired the little theater.

Every day my mother had tea. My dad has his ritual cigar. They had their evening cocktail. Those rituals were done nicely, with flair and feeling.

You are still you. The U.S. is still the U.S., held together by credit cards and Indian names