Customs Quotes - Page 24

• The breach of custom
  Is breach of all.

  William Shakespeare

  Breach

  William Shakespeare, George Somers Bellamy (1875). “The New Shaksperian Dictionary of Quotations: (With Marginal Classification and Reference.)”, p.28

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• How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Cynical, One Day

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• Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Thinking, Criticize, Conventional

  "Main Street". Book by Sinclair Lewis, 1920.

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• Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

  Bill Vaughan

  Tyrants, Hands, Feelings

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• An ancient custom obtains force of nature.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Ancient, Force, Forces Of Nature

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, De Inventione, p. 154-55, 1922.

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• Custom, madam, is the law of fools, but it shall never govern me.

  John Vanbrugh

  Law, Fool

  John Bell, Joseph Addison, Michael Arne, John Banks, Susanna Centlivre (1791). “British Theatre: Bold stroke for a wife”

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• Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love.

  Pythagoras

  Fire, Wind, Increase

  Pythagoras (2013). “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras”, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation.

  James G. Frazer

  Burning, Misinterpretation

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset - that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun.

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Air, Singing, Battle

  Jane Welsh Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle, James Anthony Froude (2011). “Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle”, p.2, Cambridge University Press

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• What a vast Traffick is drove, what a variety of Labour is performed in the World to the Maintenance of Thousands of Families that altogether depend on two silly if not odious Customs; the taking of Snuff and smoking of Tobacco; both which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them!

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Hurt, Silly, Two

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.194, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it...

  Mark Twain

  Country, Believe, Humor

  Mark Twain's "New England Weather" speech, www.pbs.org. 1876.

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• On coming to the house, they (the Magi), saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. (Matthew 2:11) [This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them.

  Martin Luther

  Mother, Kings, Children

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• Custom is second nature. Be accustomed to a bald head, sufficiently accustomed, and hair on it would seem monstrous.

  Isaac Asimov

  Hair, Accustomed, Seems

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Prelude to Foundation”, p.225, Spectra

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• The supply of good fellows is by no means in excess of the demand. A man has only to hoist the flag of hospitality to insure a very considerable amount of custom.

  Robert Smith Surtees

  Mean, Men, Flags

  Robert Smith Surtees (1930). “The novels of R.S. Surtees”

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• It is one of history's most mocking ironies that the German customs union, which set out to dominate Europe and conquer Britain in the form of Bismarckian or Hitlerian military force, has at last vanquished the victor by drawing Britain into a Zollverein which comprises Western Europe and aspires to comprise the Mediterranean as well. If the ghosts of the Hohenzollerns come back to haunt this planet, they must find a lot to laugh at.

  Enoch Powell

  Military, Europe, Drawing

  "Enoch Powell on 1992". Book by Enoch Powell, p. 93. Speech in Grimsby, 1989.

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• Old customs are easy to forget with the flashing of events in our lives. Easy to forget, like the heavy clothing we once wore to survive the winters. It is an old custom, the handing down of things. A good knife, a well-made pipe, a heavy robe. Tradition falls prey to constant change, and creativity becomes so revered that the past is a relic, only to be admired. But in this coat, I was held to the earth, pulled to the past by its weight.

  Craig Childs

  Fall, Creativity, Winter

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• All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

  David Hume

  Inference, Effects, Reasoning

  "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding". Book by David Hume, V: Skeptical Solution of these Doubts, Part I, 1739 - 1740.

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• The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom - the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection (e.g., by joining the Army

  Warren Farrell

  Army, Men, Boys

  Warren Farrell (1993). “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex”

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• The Jew is contrary to our being. ... He desecrated our people, spit on our ideals, paralyzed the strength of the nation, made our customs rotten, and polluted the morale.

  Joseph Goebbels

  People, Rotten, Spit

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• Custom calls me to 't: What custom wills, in all things should we do't, The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heap't For truth to o'erpeer.

  Brand Blanshard

  Lying, Errors, Dust

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• What they have implanted here, which is really a 'gringo' custom, is terrorism. They disguise children as witches and wizards, that is contrary to our culture.

  Hugo Chavez

  Children, Culture, Wizards

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• Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives in short, all the technical laws and customs which he encounters in office or factory.

  Jacques Ellul

  Sports, Independent, Law

  "The Technological Society". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, p. 384, 1964.

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• A custom-tailored suit retains a certain dignity about it.

  Vincent Piazza

  Tailored Suits, Dignity, Certain

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• Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

  George W. Bush

  Helping Others, Government, Law

  Second Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 2005

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• People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went aboutpretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which every­thing-our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges-was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting to noisy accompaniment.

  Michel Foucault

  Light, People, Regulation

  Michel Foucault (2012). “The History of Sexuality: An Introduction”, p.158, Vintage

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