Traditional Customs Quotes

The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

Not so much anymore but some years ago in my homeland there was a habit, something called 'casamiento de apuro,' a marriage in haste because the baby is coming and to cover socially the honor of the family. There, they weren't free and it happened many times this marriage is null. As a bishop I forbade my priests to do this.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound

If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails.

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

A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.

I don't think you can revive traditions on purpose.

When his noblemen are in his presence, they never look him in the face, but sit cowering, as we upon our knees, so they upon their buttocks with their elbows upon their knees and their hands before their faces, not looking up until the king command them. And when they are coming toward the king, as far as they do see him they do show such reverence, sitting on the ground with their faces covered as before. Likewise, when they depart from him, they turn not their backs toward him, but go creeping backward with like reverence.

In Japan, the way they act at shows is very different from home because they don't yell, they clap for about 10 seconds after the song and then it's completely silent.

The Ancient Egyptians considered it good luck to meet a swarm of Bees on the road. What they considered bad luck I couldn't say.

I move around, like a true Kazakh nomad.

In the olden times, the diversity of groups was largely a geographical matter. There were many societies, but each, within its own territory, was comparatively homogeneous. But with the development of commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and emigration, countries like the United States are composed of a combination of different groups with different traditional customs. It is this situation which has, perhaps more than any other one cause, forced the demand for an educational institution which shall provide something like a homogeneous and balanced environment for the young.

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it.

Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion. In some cases, family stories told by grandparents to little grandchildren. When I say my novels are set in Israel in the last seventy years, this entails the fact that they begin hundreds or thousands of years earlier in time. Everybody comes from somewhere.

The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.

Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change.

When you do an album about Africa, you can't be too superficial.

They may be all comprehended under three heads - 1st, Superstition; 2d, Power; 3d, the common interests of society, and the common rights of man.

My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.

We want, as the Saudi people, to enjoy the coming days and concentrate on developing our society and developing ourselves as individuals and families while retaining our religion and customs.

There goes traditional America.