CUSTOM QUOTES II

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


A good custom is surer than law.

EURIPIDES

Pirithoüs


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


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


An ancient custom obtains force of nature.

CICERO

De Inventione


Custom suffers naught to be strange to the eye.

AUSONIUS

Epigram


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


Never can custom conquer nature.

CICERO

Tusculanarum Disputationum


The interrogation of custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior mind.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Representative Men


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


The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Paradiso


Custom will often blind one to the good, as well as to the evil effects of any long-established system.

RICHARD WHATELY

Essays


Men do more things from custom than from reason.

FABARIA

attributed, Day's Collacon


Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.

LA BRUYERE

Les Caracteres


Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

preface, Killing For Sport


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

WILLIAM D'AVENANT

Circe


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


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

BOVEE

attributed, Day's Collacon