Quotes About Custom

Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

Custom is the great guide to human life.

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

Dutifully I knock on the table. "What does knock on wood even mean?" Daddy perks up. "Actually, it's thought to come from Greek mythology. According to Greek myths, dryads lived in trees, and people would invoke them for protection. Hence knocking on wood: just that added bit of protection so as not to tempt fate.

The club also had the custom of sending robed members to kidnap visiting celebrities and steal them away in a black coach with covered windows, all without saying a word.

It is true that in this time people set their faces hard for photographs, partly from custom, partly because of deficits in photographic technology, but this crowd might not have smiled for the better part of a century. The women seem suspended in a state somewhere between melancholy and fury and are surrounded by old men in strange beards that look as if someone had dabbed glue at random points on their faces, then hurled buckets of white hair in their direction.

Straw Hat Day," Saturday, May 1, when a man could at last break out his summer hats. Men followed this rule.

He squatted on his haunches, and I joined him. Muscovites, with the insistent air of urbane sophisticates, like to note that the pose is not native to Russia. Balancing yourself on your heels, often for hours, to wait or talk is a custom of the Caucasus and Central Asia, but one that Russians at some point ages ago seem to have taken as their own.

One person believes in sprites and visits the sacred grove, and another believes in Jesus and goes to the church. It's just a matter of fashion. There's no use in getting involved with just one god; they're more like brooches or pearls, just for decoration. For hanging around your neck, or for playing with.

Troops! Call out the troops!' shouted another miner, shooing away children who–as is the immemorial custom of all the world's children–had appeared from nowhere to watch and get in the way.

The demands of ritual are always stronger than those of reason.

We are told not to leave food on the table overnight: it draws the dead.

I had these shoes made and 2 to 3 inch lifts inside and the heel was another 2 and half inches. I walked around that way, wherever I could without falling over.

I believe in not whistling backstage and not saying the name of the Scottish play.

Most Kikuyu marriages were arranged on the basis of what is described by anthropologists as the bride price.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

Now and then some one says that the religion of his father and mother is good enough for him, and wonders why anybody should desire a better. Surely we are not bound to follow our parents in religion any more than in politics, science or art.

Custom brings predictability, and predictability carries its own comforts.

Every Tuesday by decree of the empress, men would attend dressed as women and women would dance dressed as men.

As long as custom and command ruled the world, the problem of riches and poverty hardly struck the earlier philosophers at all, other than to be accepted with a sigh or railed at as another sign of man's inner worthlessness.

There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. The Christian religion, which alone has reason, does not acknowledge as her true children those who believe without inspiration. It is not that she excludes reason and custom. On the contrary, the mind must be open to proofs, must be confirmed by custom, and offer itself in humbleness to inspirations, which alone can produce a true and saving effect