Quotes About Customs

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all of which limit it to a fake learnedness.

For nothing is of greater importance than that a powerful, long-established, and irrational custom should be once again confirmed by the act of some one who is recognized as rational. In this way the proceeding is thought to be sanctioned by reason itself! All honor to your opinions! but little unconventional actions are of still greater value.

Look, all of us have our private rituals—our own little peculiar ways of eating and drinking and sleeping and going to the bathroom. Rituals we're hardly conscious of, but that would look mighty strange if analyzed. You know, to step or not to step on cracks in the sidewalk. Things like that.

I'm only stopped by people in uniform, whether it's customs people, janitors, or the FBI - they all watch 'The Wire.' Sadly, beautiful, glamorous women don't know anything about it.

It is in the province of home and society that woman has fashioned the customs. Here, women's approval and disapproval, wishes and wants, have been quite as formative and reformative as the action of the sea on the mainland.

In the Philippines, the host should always be willing to defer to the wishes of the guest.

Never try to be witty with U.S. airport officials. It's always lost on them and you'll find yourself being put back on the plane.

What I've always loved about faeries is the way that they, unlike so many other supernatural creatures, are not human and have never been human. They have different customs and different taboos, and woe to anyone who breaks them.

In 'A Scandalous Woman,' the eventually distraught narrator watches as her high-spirited friend is beaten down - literally and figuratively - by Ireland's pious customs.

We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.

Though I'm not religious in the classical sense I did partake in Passover.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

It was like hearing customs from an undiscoverd race: what men thought was unimaginable....She wondered if all human activity were like this, everything, every gesture, every comment colored faintly by gender. Each side continually astonished, confused by the other's misperceptions. p 133

Culture is partly made out of information. There are at least two main types of this information. One is a set of shared beliefs and values. The other is shared knowledge of how to do things. Culture consists of both.

Through my observations, it became clear that most of society's rules and customs are rooted in fear and superstition!

Tradition is a guide to the permanent qualities in society and thought and private life which need to be preserved in one form or another, throughout the process of inevitable change.

Most men and women are good only from habit, or out of deference to the opinions of their neighbors, the friend to tradition argues; and to deprive them of their habits, customs, and precepts, in order to benefit them in some novel way, may leave them morally and socially adrift, more harmed by their loss of ethical sanctions than helped by the fancied new benefit.

From the moment of his birth the customs into which [an individual] is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture.

A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones. Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C. Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for eating but just to hold the meat still while you hacked at it with your knife.

13. The foolishness of people who are surprised by anything that happens. Like travelers amazed at foreign customs.

The foolishness of people who are surprised by anything that happens. Like travelers amazed at foreign customs.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

I'm not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don't know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.

The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all kinds. This is why they have bidets.