Quotes About Tradition

The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet.

But he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law on four sides. He was in a moving box. As he perceived this fact it occurred to him that he had never wished to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by the merciless government. And now they were taking him out to be slaughtered.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.

Could such a many-chambered edifice have stood a century and a half and not have had its passages of romance to bequeath their lingering legends to the after-time?... It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds...

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or that our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think.

He comes of the Brahmin caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father's have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a large part than what we suspect of what we think.

Bien sabían los ingleses que las naciones se construyen sobre las tumbas de sus héroes. De no ser así, ¿para qué querían la abadía de Westminster?

Accordingly, if we put it in extreme terms, all types of Zen other than Patriarchal Zen are inauthentic. However, in a positive sense, it may be said that Zen Outside the Way (Gedo Zen), Common Zen (Bompu Zen), Zen of the Mouth and Head (Koto Zen), Literary Zen (Moji Zen), Zen for Health (Kenko Zen), Zen for Medical Treatment (Ryoyo Zen), and all the rest exist within the realm of Patriarchal Zen.

In the Jiki-shinkage-ryu (the Straight-Mind-Shadow school of swordsmanship) there is a basic set of movements called Hojo which is indeed the most magnificent I have ever known. It is accompanied by deep breathing marked by the sound "Ah" when inhaling and "Um" when exhaling.

I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, 'you are going to have to learn to do this ' and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother's life.

Life will go on as long as there is someone to sing, to dance, to tell stories and to listen.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead. Period.

Though I hear witchery referred to as a religion by the modern movement, this is not how the traditional witches originally described it to me. They described it more as a philosophy, a way of life, and even a set of techniques to make visible changes through working invisible means and by direct encounter and exchange.

In the mind of the ordinary peasant the Tsar was not just a kingly ruler but a god on earth. He thought of him as a father-figure who knew all the peasants personally by name, understood their problems in all their minute details, and, if it were not for the evil boyars who surrounded him, would satisfy their demands. Hence the peasant tradition of sending direct appeals to the Tsar.

Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.

I think the greatest difference between China and the West, which can never be made up, is that the Chinese are fond of antiquity, but neglect the present [whereas] Westerners are struggling in the present in order to supersede the past.

the multiple angry assaults on the "traditional family" are the rotten fruit of Christians corrupting the beauty and strength of the "covenantal family" of the Bible into the hated "hierarchical family" of the stereotypes so loved by feminists and others. Still

The West is cutting off its Jewish and Christian roots and destroying the entire root system of its culture

The problem with tradition is that it can cause even an error of great magnitude to go unnoticed

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.

There are no new tales, but we shall always be ready to listen to a new telling of the old ones.