Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.
Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.
Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture.
Breaking a glass in the northwest is rather like belching in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation.
Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society
In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.
We're not religious, but we've always done Passover and Hanukkah.
When the Quaker Penn kept his hat on in the royal presence, Charles (King Charles II) politely removed his, explaining that it was the custom in that place for only one person at a time to remain covered.
When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.
Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.
Ceremony keeps up things: 'tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, and the spirit lost.
Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for laudable or for evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. In itself, it carries no moral value, but ignorance in use of this tool is not a sign of virtue.
I don't think young people need to see the face of the deceased.
In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.
It would be nice if people said, God bless you not just when you sneezed but also when you farted.
There are no instances known to me of cultures having forsaken Truth or renounced the understanding in its widest sense.
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned.
Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. In South America they throw flowers to you. In Greece Greeks throw themselves.
Myth, legend, and ritual ... function to maintain a status quo. That makes them singularly bad in coping with change, indeed counterproductive, for change is the enemy of myth.
Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.
Familiarity is a suspension of almost all the laws of civility, which libertinism has introduced into society under the notion of ease.
Eid is here! On the first day, it is a custom for all Malaysian Muslims to ask for forgiveness from our parents. We kiss their hands and wish them 'Selamat Hari Raya' or 'Eid Mubarak.' 'Maaf Zahir dan Batin' means 'to apologize in spirit and actions.'
If a community of people wears white on a mournful occasion and another dresses in black, then one community would like white and dislike black and the other would like black and dislike white. Moreover, this attitude leaves a physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body.
Those who live not by law would be justified by Custom: but, as common practice is the worst teacher that ever was, so the truth and goodness of things is not to be estimated by the entertainment and acceptance they find in the world.
Culture as we're practicing it is causing a lot of pain.
