Quotes About Custom

Any religion...is for ever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

Privileged men showed off their status by keeping their womenfolk out of public life and hidden from view in the private quarters of their households. The psychology underlying this custom was (I think) the feeling that a man's honor—which really means his ability to hold his head high among his fellow men—depended on his ability to keep any women associated with him from becoming the objects of other men's sexual fantasies.

my tastes have always leaned toward bespoke rather than brand name,

At noon of the first day of every year, it is traditional for the crier to recite a passage of verse, an ode composed long ago for this annual celebration, which takes exactly one hour to deliver

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Eccentricity, to be socially acceptable, had still to have at least four or five generations of inbreeding behind it.

Knock on wood is a saying for good luck. I think that started when someone went to someone's door to see if someone was home. "I hope Joe's home, knock on wood!"

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

Two wives? That exceeds the custom.

It is ill to marry in the month of May.

To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.

Cast off all bonds of prejudice and custom, and let the love of Christ, which is in you, have free course to run out in all conceivable schemes and methods of labour for the souls of men.

Man must not check his reason by tradition, but, contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.

Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all.

These simple terms—"come about," for example—denote procedures that are as complicated and tradition-bound as the installation of a new Pope.

Why bother to have a technical term for a religious ritual?

The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down.

Habit and tradition often render change undesirable.

I'm finishing building a house and setting up a shop to build custom electronical musical instruments.

My parents gave me a Mexican name. In our culture, we are named after the events of the day.

Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

THE BUSINESS OF SELLING SLAVES had been changing in Charleston. It was no longer as picturesque as it had been when William Makepeace Thackeray first visited. In 1856, the city decided the auctions near the Old Exchange and Custom House were out of hand, and the various slave brokers started opening up their own showrooms, with pens outside to hold the chattel.

Oh, not tonight, good Iago," said Cassio. "I have poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

We exchanged greetings, and in the African way we could make that take time.