Customs Quotes

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.

William Hazlitt

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

John Stuart Mill

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

George Bernard Shaw

The empire of custom is most mighty.

Publilius Syrus

Custom is a tyrant.

Proverb

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

Charles Davenport

People do more from custom than from reason.

Source Unknown

In view of all this, I have no doubt that Cambyses was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made sacred in Egypt. 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 consideration 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; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country. One might recall, in particular, an anecdote of Darius. When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who happened to be present in his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the presence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called the Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents' dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing. One can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it king of all.(Herodotus is expressing his own feelings about the story of the madness of Cambyses)

Herodotus, Custom Rules (from Th

Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.

David Hume

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Michel de Montaigne

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

John Updike

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

Mark Twain

Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit.

Ovid

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Edmund Burke

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

Mary Wortley Montagu

Laws are subordinate to custom.

Plautus

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

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

Thomas Hardy