quotations about custom
When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
JOHN LOCKE
First Treatise of Government
Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Individuality
Custom, that unwritten law,
By which the people keep even kings in awe.
WILLIAM D'AVENANT
Circe
How many unjust and wicked things are sanctioned by custom.
TERENCE
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.
BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Spectacles"
Cast away the bondage and the fear of rotten custom.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
Sonnets
What custom hath endeared
We part with sadly, though we prize it not.
JOANNA BAILLIE
Basil
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
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
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
HENRY FIELDING
The Wedding-Day
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
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
preface, Killing For Sport
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.
LEMONY SNICKET
The Blank Book
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
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
But to my mind, though I am native here,
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Man might be described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many of the short descriptions. In whatever way a man has done anything once, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times he has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great tendency to make others do it also. He transmits his formed customs to his children by example and by teaching. This is true now of human nature, and will always be true, no doubt. But what is peculiar in early societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner or later a semi-supernatural sanction. The whole community is possessed with the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm unspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources you cannot imagine.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics