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Quotes About Customs

pervasive part of the island culture
~ Pat Conroy
If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.
~ Daniel Quinn
I'm not an anthropology buff, but I've read enough of it to know that the Zuni don't think that their way is the way for everyone, and that the Navajo don't think their way is the way for everyone. Each of them has a way that works well for them .
~ Daniel Quinn
This is of course a startling idea, the idea that laws could be anything but invented - but that's exactly the point to be made about tribal laws. Tribal laws are never invented laws, they're always received laws.
~ Daniel Quinn
And lash the vice and follies of the age.
~ Susanna Centlivre
As per the age-old Customs and Central Excise Rules 1967, a person is allowed to carry only Rs 20,000 worth of gold.
~ Vayalar Ravi
Until the mid-1700s, newborn babies were often fed, or "dry-nursed," with bread, cake or biscuit mixed with cow's milk, butter and sugar—known as "pap"—supplemented by brandy, rum or wine
~ Wendy Moore
Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
~ Will and Ariel Durant
The institutions, conventions, customs and laws that make up the complex structure of a society are the work of a hundred centuries and a billion minds; and one mind must not expect to comprehend them in one lifetime, much less in twenty years.
~ Will Durant
Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution. Savages gorge themselves or fast."2 The wilder tribes among the American Indians considered it weak-kneed and unseemly to preserve food for the next day.3 The natives of Australia are incapable of any labor whose reward is not immediate; every Hottentot is a gentleman of leisure; and with the Bushmen of Africa it is always "either a feast or a famine.
~ Will Durant
No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
~ Will Durant
It seems strange to find a Baptist such as yourself so well acquainted with Jewish customs, I said. Yes, well, knowledge is a good thing. If the Bible says that the Jews are His chosen people, we ought to take it seriously.
~ Will Thomas
Toda nuestra vida en cuanto a su forma definida , no es más que un conjunto de hábitos
~ William James
After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?' I'd asked. 'Do you really need to know?' my father had asked back.
~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Gift giving is part of the culture no matter where you are and no matter how long you stay.
~ Christalyn Brannen
The two Christians met on the way many people who were going to their towns, women and men, with a firebrand in the hand, [and] herbs to drink the smoke thereof, as they are accustomed.
~ Christopher Columbus
We were now in full spring. March had come and on the fourth of the month began the New Year Festival—the greatest of all Tibetan feasts, which lasts for three weeks.
~ Heinrich Harrer
Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery.
~ HELEN DENDY BOSANQUET
All governments, books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all the stark realities that men have made, are but imagination's utterances.
~ Henry Abbey
China, until the modern age, imposed its own matrix of customs and culture on invaders so successfully that they grew indistinguishable from the Chinese people. By contrast, India transcended foreigners not by converting them to Indian religion or culture but by treating their ambitions with supreme equanimity; it integrated their achievements and their diverse doctrines into the fabric of Indian life without ever professing to be especially awed by any of them.
~ Henry Kissinger
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Anything to declare? the customs inspector said."Two pound of uncut heroin and a manual of pornographic art," Mark answered, looking about for Kity. All Americans are comedians, the inspector thought, as he passed Parker through. A government tourist hostess approached him."Are you Mr. Mark Parker?""Guilty.
~ Leon Uris
During her childhood, Jane had been "placed out," the term for children from middle-income families who were sent to live with members of the nobility, or the offspring of an aristocrat who were sent to the palace to learn the manners and customs of royalty, to better cement the family's social connections and pave the way for a spectacular marriage.
~ Leslie Carroll
It was Italy after all. People probably hit each other all the time.
~ Lev Grossman