Custom Quotes

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

An ancient custom obtains force of nature.

We become aware, however, that all customs, even the hardest, grow pleasanter and milder with time, and that the severest way of life may become a habit and therefore a pleasure.

The breach of customIs breach of all.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous (Nay, let em be unmanly), yet are followed.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.

I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o'clock.

Custom is petrification, nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.

If is a custom,More honor'd in the breach than the observance.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.

Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.

Habit is, as it were, a second nature.[Lat., Consuetudo quasi altera natura effici.]

But to my mind, though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom, More honored in the breach than the observance.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.