Quotes on Customs

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety.

Call a truce, then, to our labors - let us feast with friends and neighbors, and be merry as the custom of our caste; for if ''faint and forced the laughter,'' and if sadness follow after, we are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.

THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart. Suddenly you flare again in my sight A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only shade And I am blessed and choose again, That which I chose before.

Nice customs curtsy to great kings.

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

To-day the woman is Mrs. Richard Roe, to-morrow Mrs. John Doe, and again Mrs. James Smith according as she changes masters, and she has so little self-respect that she does not see the insult of the custom.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

There are apparently few limitations either of time or space on where the psyche might journey and only the customs inspector employed by our own inhibitions restricts what it might bring back when it reenters the home country of everyday consciousness.

I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we are!

.., by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction.

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.

She dealt her pretty words like Blades -- How glittering they shone -- And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone -- She never deemed -- she hurt -- That -- is not Steel's Affair -- A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -- How ill the Creatures bear -- To Ache is human -- not polite -- The Film upon the eye Mortality's old Custom -- Just locking up -- to Die.

The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave - caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition - cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.

The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.