quotations about custom
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 you have become accustomed to a thing, does not make it right.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.
JOSEPH W. KRUTCH
The Modern Temper
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.
LEMONY SNICKET
The Blank Book
'Tis nothing when you are used to it.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Polite Conversation
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
Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
Custom governs the world: it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners, and rules with a hand of a despot.
J. BARTLETT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Custom, that unwritten law,
By which the people keep even kings in awe.
WILLIAM D'AVENANT
Circe
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
So many countries, so many customs.
JOHN RAY
English Proverbs
So they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out on them.
BIBLE
1 Kings 18:28
We have brought in the yoke of custom to improve the world, and in the world the custom sticks.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
My normal isn't your normal, and your normal isn't anyone else's normal. In fact, on this journey called life, normal isn't normal.
TYEISHA BREWER-FIELDS
Normal By Whose Standards?
What humanity abhors, custome reconciles and recommends to us.
JOHN LOCKE
On Education
Custom is a violent and deceiving school-mistress.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Essays
Woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean.
AUGUSTINE
Confessions
'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
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash; for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashions to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon