Custom Quotes

“Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

“We naturally like what we have been accustomed to, and are attracted towards it. [...] The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views.”
― Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed

“What if custom is wrong? demanded the part of her that believed in the code of chivalry. A knight must set things right.”
― Tamora Pierce, First Test

“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, Our Oriental Heritage

“Nice customs curtsy to great kings.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“The believer is not a slave to fashion.

”
― Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

“Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no action, however bizarre you may picture it, that is truly criminal; or one that can really be called virtuous. Everything depends on our customs and on the climates we live in. What is considered a crime here is often a virtue a few hundred leagues away; and the virtues of another hemisphere might, quite conversely, be regarded as crimes among us. There is no atrocity that hasn't been deified, no virtue that hasn't been stigmatized.”
― Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir

“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Manalive

“The imagination serves us only when the mind is absolutely free of any prejudice. A single prejudice suffices to cool off the imagination. This whimsical part of the mind is so unbridled as to be uncontrollable. Its greatest triumphs, its most eminent delights consist in smashing all the restraints that oppose it. Imagination is the enemy of all norms, the idolater of all disorder and of all that bears the color of crime.”
― Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir

“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“As an anarch, who acknowledges neither law nor custom, I owe it to myself to get at the very heart of things. I then probe them in terms of their contradictions, like image and mirror image. Either is imperfect – by seeking to unite them, which I practice every morning, I manage to catch a corner of reality.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“If it became customary to go out into the street stark naked I should not be the first nor the last to conform.”
― Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew / D'Alembert's Dream

“I don't believe in these customs and rituals, as it's like manufacturing culture-fits on the graveyard of diversity. But then I haven't yet found any other alternative to this prevalent system, which doesn't have its fair share of drawbacks. So if following a custom means being courteous to someone, why not?”
― Anurag Shrivastava, The Web of Karma

“The ground for morality can only be prepared when a greater individual or collective-individual, as, for example, society or state, subjects the individuals in it, that is, when it draws them out of their isolatedness and integrates them into a union. Force precedes morality; indeed, for a time morality itself is a force, to which others acquiesce to avoid unpleasere. Later it becomes custom, and still later free obedience and finally almost instinct: then it is coupled to pleasure, like all habitual and natural things, and is now called virtue.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“They agree with the current customs. They consent with an impure age. Their principles have a semblance of right-heartedness and truth. Their conduct has a semblance of disinterestedness and purity. All men are pleased with them, and they think themselves right, but you cannot enter into the Way of Yao and Shun with them. For this reason they are called “The thieves of virtue.”
― Mencius

“आदतें अच्छी हों या बुरी, उम्र के साथ-साथ पकने लगती हैं और कभी-कभी किसी एक व्यक्ति की कोई आदत, उसके परिवार की परंपरा बन जाती है ।”
― Vandana Yadav, कितने मोर्चे

“Choose to respect other people’s cultures or heritage.
Whether you believe in yours or not.
Whether you practice yours or not.”
― De philosopher DJ Kyos

“I find that our
greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender
infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse.
Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a
chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise
fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a
martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a
poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a
great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow
by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and
roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the
subject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more
sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and
young.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.”
― W.B. Yeats

“In proportion as men were all to resemble each other, and to have faces and manners in common, their self-love was not to be disturbed by any thing in the shape of individuality. A writer might be na tural, but he was to be natural only as far as their sense of nature would go, and this was not a great way. Besides, even when he was natural, he hardly dared to be so in language as well as idea ;- there gradually came up a kind of dress, in which a man’s mind, as well as body, was to clothe itself.”
― Leigh Hunt, The Round Table, Vol. 1: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners

“We are our culture and tradition; if there is no culture or tradition we are no one.”
― Tamerlan A Kuzgov

“Men are scoundrels; they can get used to anything.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The Dragon is the gatekeeper to the Divine Court who lets pass only those who have stripped off all the garments of religiosity and custom, and who are ready and willing to give up their very lives. For beyond this desert, the Sufi loses him or herself and gains Allah. That is why they call it a desert. That is why it is such a frightening place, for the ego cannot pass by the Gatekeeper!”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“On one occasion, an ancient great-aunt of mine, hieratically assuming a head-dress of feather and globules of jet, required me to accompany her to the beehives. ‘But you surely don't need a hat, Aunt Jane! They're only at the end of the garden.’ ‘It is the custom,’ she said, grandly. ‘Put a scarf over your head.’ Arrived, she stood in silence for a moment. Then — ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man. Besides,’ she added — as though the bees needed the telling! — ‘everyone has to die’.”
― P.L. Travers, What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story

“One must act in a certain way!' ... This imperative not only contains the desire to preserve a prehistoric given form of vital connections but also presupposes a possibility that his form could be disrupted. It expresses the struggle of two forces - the inner contradiction of life. Both sides of a custom find objective expression when its 'norm' is disturbed: this is when 'coercion' enters the scene and puts an end to the disturbance. 'Custom' manifests itself as a coercive norm with a specific sanction.
This opens a whole new sphere of human development.”
― Alexander Bogdanov

“Wegens de krapte zijn de meeste kinderen en jongeren geneigd om veel, talrijk en langdurig op straat te hangen, anders kibbelen ze met de divisie thuis, ledigheid is immers des duivels oorkussen, of ondervinden ze hinder van de ouders die ongevraagd je kamer binnenstormen (kloppen doen we niet aan bij ons, privacy evenmin) en vervolgens jou voor klaagmuur aanzien en beginnen te raaskallen over alles waar ze hun ei of zaad over kwijt moeten, meestal familiaire aangelegenheden, financieel noodweer, huwelijks gesodemieter, en anders over eventuele rommel in je kamer. Ze komen je vragen om de post voor ze te vertalen en allerlei formulieren in te vullen en worden ook nog boos en verwijtend als je dat niet kunt, zelfs al ben je nog kind. Ze eisen dat je naar de moskee gaat op vrijdag, vragen waarom je niet bidt, vragen wat je kijkt op de telefoon, vragen waarom je lacht als je op je beeldscherm kijkt, vragen met wie je belt en waarom dat klinkt als de stem van iemand van het andere geslacht of ze produceren gewoon heel veel geluid terwijl ze videobellen met familieleden, zowel uit het buiten- als binnenland, terwijl jij je moet concentreren op je huiswerk of gewoon niet blootgesteld wilt worden aan dat oeverloze gezwatel. Het ergste van alles is als er mensen onthaald worden en de visite zo lang blijft zetelen dat je je afvraagt of ze van plan zijn te blijven tukken. En dat gebeurt nogal frequent; op elk moment van de week kunnen ze ongegeneerd komen aankloppen en blijven tot je ze afwimpelt door opzichtig te gapen. Men zegt dat bezoek en vis drie dagen fris blijven, daar hadden ze bij de Turken nog geen notie van genomen. Of ze namen die drie dagen letterlijk.”
― Lale Gül, Ik ga leven

“Peace seemed to roll in through the open door in the wake of Joan's departure. Elena took her son in her arms and gently kissed his face. His eyes were heavy with sleep, but the lids were almost transparent so that the blue of his eyes glowed through them like a jewel through gauze. She stroked the soft apricot down on his warm head and slid her finger into the tiny fist, feeling the fingers curl tightly round her own as if he knew without looking that it was his mother's hand.

The bairn, that's what they all called him. Athan said he had chosen a name, but Joan declared it was bad luck to say it out loud before the baptism in case a stranger or the faerie folk should learn it and use it to witch the child before his name was sanctified by the Church. At his baptism Athan would whisper it to the priest at the font, but only when the priest proclaimed it to the congregation would Elena knew what they were going to call her baby.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“One of the reasons that formality is invented is to keep the souls away from contamination!”
― Abhijit Kar Gupta, Scientific Computing in Python

“There is no wild culture; it is wild to have none.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Old customs are not meant to make us old.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov