Customs Quotes

“Now, come over here so I can pat you down."
"But you don't have-" Percy stopped. "Uh, sure."
He stood next to the armless statue. Terminus conducted a rigorous mental pat down.
"You seem to be clean," Terminus decided. "Do you have anything to declare?"
"Yes," Percy said. "I declare that this is stupid.”
― Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune

“Santa Claus has nothing to do with it," the latke said. "Christmas and Hanukah are completely different things."

"But different things can often blend together," said the pine tree. "Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story

“If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“heir eyes met. They both smiled, aware that they were in public, where anyone could see them on the street and in the window. But the rest of the world did not matter. For that moment, everything else vanished. He was there, she was there, no trouble could touch them.”
― Jeanette Watts, My Dearest Miss Fairfax

“[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

“The believer is not a slave to fashion.

”
― Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

“Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy

“Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them."
"They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

“I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true.”
― Andy Rooney, Sincerely, Andy Rooney

“Writing is a solitary pleasure. Reading is a solitary pleasure. Does this mean that the writer and the readers do not like humanity?
On the contrary! Beyond time and space, beyond colors and customs, the writer and the readers share dreams, knowledge, hopes, imagination, and love of mankind.”
― Gabrielle Dubois

“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.”
― Mark Twain

“Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom.”
― Brand Blanshard

“Love is only surpassing sweet when it is directed toward a mortal object, and the secret of this ultimate sweetness only is defined by the bitterness of death. Thus the white peoples of the world foresee a time when their land with its rivers and mountains still lies under heaven as it does today, but other people dwell there; when their language is entombed in books, and their laws and customs have lost their living power.”
― Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought

“Her name...was Mrs. marina Orlova, and she had grown up in Siberia. Later, she would tell him that she loathed the American custom of constantly smiling: "They are like chimpanzees," she said, in her bitter exclamatory voice. She grimaced, baring her teeth grotesquely. "Eee!" she said. "I smile at you! Eee! It is repulsive.”
― Dan Chaon, You Remind Me of Me

“Whatever is unknown is thought grandiose.”
― Tacitus, Agricola

“Governments must conform to the nature of the people governed. This axiom indicates that, by the nature of human civil institutions, the public school of rulers is the morality of the people.”
― Giambattista Vico, New Science

“And so we entered the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on the tiny island of Bequia with entry stamps given as if twisting through a turnstile to enter an amusement park.”
― Laurie Perez, The Power of Amie Martine

“... For the first Cynics probably did not fight in any battles, and they certainly condemned war as another instance of the idiocy of custom (nomos). Critiques of war surface as early as Homer's Achilles; there is a strong deprecation of war in both Herodotus and intellectual communities like the Academy and Lyceum. In their idealism, the Cynics made such critiques far more radical. For, according to them, why would one fight a war? If it were for the sake of wealth or honor, then what are wealth and honor? True wealth is self-sufficiency, not the coin and plunder that contemporary mercenaries covet. Honor is but a word, a "mere scutcheon;' and the Cynics will have none of it. The feckless wars of the late fifth and fourth centuries could only deepen this sense of disillusion: now Athens, now Sparta, now Thebes, now Jason of Pherae, now Philip, now Antigonus, now Seleucus, now some other king is in the ascendant, each contending furiously for the hegemony and spot of distinction. Yet, in the end, all this ambition comes to nothing, for all its objects are subject to the caprices of Tuche; in the end, even Alexander is just a wanderer with his shadow. It is more honest to reject the false absolutes of wealth, honor, and fatherland. Wisdom is seeing through such false notions and freeing oneself from the tyranny of customary language and thought-patterns. The true absolute is the self and in the self, all other values are recovered.”
― Will Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism

“Η φριχτότερη λέξη είναι η παράδοση. Σημαίνει ότι οι νεκροί εξουσιάζουν τους ζωντανούς, ότι είσαι πιόνι όντων που δεν σε γνώρισαν ποτέ κι ωστόσο ζουν τη ζωή σου.”
― Αύγουστος Κορτώ, Το πράσινο αστέρι

“When did we stop burying those we love with our own hands?”
― Yuri Herrera, The Transmigration of Bodies

“Old customs are not meant to make us old.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“We look for roots in dead men's custom, while we should be looking among the living.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Please note your extensive customs briefing and remember to relinquish any illegal tools or concepts you may be carrying before debarkation.”
― Charles Stross, Toast, and Other Stories

“The "government of reformers," as is now obvious, operated a policy of over-the-top corrupt protectionism that would turn any real conservative green with envy. Huge duties were imposed under the pretext of protecting domestic manufacturers. Then they were canceled, before being reintroduced. Customs policy could change by anyone bringing a suitcase of cash to the government. Needless to say, every decision to impose high duties was accompanied by ways of making it possible to circumvent them, exceptions for special cases. Ultimately, the most straightforward and effective idea came to dominate: redesignating goods subject to a high rate of duty as belonging to a different category, which attracted a low rate.”
― Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir

“Immigration is learning to stretch
into a bridge,
backward and forward,
one limb in each place,
learning to hold tight to traditions
and customs and names and memories in one hand,
and with the other hand let go and lean in
to a place you hope will see you
for all the beauty that you bring.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice

“All customs don't make culture, customs rooted in fanaticism must be rooted out, so that actual human culture can take root.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“I'm crossing some border, local customs
changing, and the way people speak.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei