quotations about custom
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
HENRY FIELDING
The Wedding-Day
Just because you have become accustomed to a thing, does not make it right.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
Custom, that unwritten law,
By which the people keep even kings in awe.
WILLIAM D'AVENANT
Circe
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
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
Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
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
So many countries, so many customs.
JOHN RAY
English Proverbs
Custom has furnished the only basis which ethics have ever had.
JOSEPH W. KRUTCH
The Modern Temper
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
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
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?
We have brought in the yoke of custom to improve the world, and in the world the custom sticks.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
'Tis nothing when you are used to it.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Polite Conversation
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
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
Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools.
JOHN RAY
English Proverbs
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