The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Age of Enlightenment4 quotes
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. — David Hume · 1748Custom reconciles us to everything. — Edmund Burke · 1757There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever. — Denis Diderot · 1805The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. — Edmund Burke · 1796Early Christianity2 quotes
When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere. — St. Ambrose · 397The Lord says in the gospel; "I am the Truth." He does not say "I am custom." Therefore, when the truth is made manifest, custom must give way to truth. — Libosus of Vaga · 400The Renaissance2 quotes
But, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance. — William Shakespeare · 1616Everyone calls barbarism what is not customary to him. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Classical antiquity1 quote
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. — Diogenes Laertius · 240