quotations about custom
Custom will often blind one to the good, as well as to the evil effects of any long-established system.
RICHARD WHATELY
Essays
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.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
No barbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate from the old barbarous customs and usages of their tribe. Very commonly all the tribe would expect a punishment from the gods if any one of them refrained from what was old, or began what was new.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The constant pressure of custom; the effects of imitation, of education, and of habit; the incalculable influence of man on man, produce a working uniformity of conviction more effectually than the gallows and the stake, though without the cruelty, and with far more than the wisdom that have usually been vouchsafed to official persecutors.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
When a custom is actually proved to exist, the next enquiry is into the legality of it; for if it is not a good custom it ought to be no longer used.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
Commentaries on the Laws of England
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.
BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Habit or custom, like a complex mathematical scheme, flows from a point, insensibly becomes a line, and unhappily in that which is evil, it may become a curve.
R. ROBINSON
attributed, Laconics
Cast away the bondage and the fear of rotten custom.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
Sonnets
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
HENRY FIELDING
The Wedding-Day
'Tis base,
And argues a low spirit, to be taught
By customs, and to let the vulgar grow
To our example.
ROBERT MEAD
The Combat of Love and Friendship
The slaves of custom and established mode,
With pack-horse constancy we keep the road
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells,
True to the jingling of our leader's bells.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
preface, Killing For Sport
Custom, that unwritten law,
By which the people keep even kings in awe.
WILLIAM D'AVENANT
Circe
For the customs of the peoples are delusion;
Because it is wood cut from the forest,
The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.
They decorate it with silver and with gold;
They fasten it with nails and with hammers
So that it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good.
BIBLE
Jeremiah 10:3-5
Those who live not by law would be justified by Custom: but, as common practice is the worst teacher that ever was, so the truth and goodness of things is not to be estimated by the entertainment and acceptance they find in the world.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse; woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house-furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers: For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
The Death of Wallenstein
I cannot draw a distinction as to what length of time will render a practice legal.
C. J. DALLAS
Butt v. Conant, 1828