CUSTOM QUOTES III

quotations about custom

Like those crabs which dress themselves with seaweed, we wear belief and custom.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave


Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.

HENRY FIELDING

The Wedding-Day


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


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


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


There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

BOVEE

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


'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


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?


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


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

Tags: William Blackstone


Custom, that unwritten law,
By which the people keep even kings in awe.

WILLIAM D'AVENANT

Circe


What custom hath endeared
We part with sadly, though we prize it not.

JOANNA BAILLIE

Basil


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


Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

Individuality


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


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


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


Nice customs curtsy to great kings.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Henry V


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