Quotes
Quotes about Custom
A thing of custom,--'t is no other;
Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.
Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not "seems."
'T is not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black.
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
Nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will.
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep
Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree:
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
Custom reconciles us to everything.
He sees that this great roundabout
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says--what says he?--Caw.
Such is the custom of Branksome Hall.
When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,--thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies
and to end as superstitions.
How many things, both just and unjust, are sanctioned by custom!
Nothing is stronger than custom.
It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,--a practice which has now passed into a proverb. It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms.... Under these circumstances, they say that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one latchet too few. The next day, the shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticise the leg; upon which Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion beyond the shoes, --a piece of advice which has equally passed into a proverbial saying.
Custom is almost a second nature.
We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature.
There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the unwritten law.
