quotations about custom
Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Samuel Butler's Notebooks
Outside in accordance with custom; inside as we please.
SENECA
Epistulae ad Lucilium
Choose what is best; custom will make it agreeable and easy.
PYTHAGORAS
Ethical Sentences from Stobaeus
Man yields to custom, as he bows to fate,
In all things ruled--mind, body, and estate;
In pain, in sickness, we for cure apply
To them we know not, and we know not why.
GEORGE CRABBE
The Gentleman Farmer
A good custom is surer than law.
EURIPIDES
Pirithoüs
An ancient custom obtains force of nature.
CICERO
De Inventione
If you are determined to live and die a slave to custom, see that it is at least a good one.
E. P. DAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Paradiso
Never can custom conquer nature.
CICERO
Tusculanarum Disputationum
Custom suffers naught to be strange to the eye.
AUSONIUS
Epigram
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accomodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.
RUTH BENEDICT
Patterns of Culture
Men do more things from custom than from reason.
FABARIA
attributed, Day's Collacon
To attack a man's customs is to attack his very foundation.
FABIAN BYOMUHANGI
The Whirlwind
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
JAMES A. MICHENER
attributed, Reader's Digest, 1975
Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
LA BRUYERE
Les Caracteres
The interrogation of custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior mind.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Representative Men
Custom will often blind one to the good, as well as to the evil effects of any long-established system.
RICHARD WHATELY
Essays
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
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
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.
BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon