Quotes · Skopia

29 quotes

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot · 1953

★ 5.1

The men, women, and children who compose a society at any time are the unconscious depositaries and transmitters of the mores. They inherited them without knowing it; they are molding them unconsciously; they will transmit them involuntarily. The people cannot make the mores. They are made by them.

William Graham Sumner

Folkways · 1906

★ 5.0

Essay · Political literature

So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

John Stuart Mill

The Subjection of Women · 1869

★ 4.5

Play · Tragedy (play)

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

Hamlet · 1616

★ 4.0

Novel

One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.

Jane Austen

Persuasion · 1817

★ 4.0

Philosophical literature

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

David Hume

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding · 1748

★ 3.9

Travel writing

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Mark Twain

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

Essay

Everyone calls barbarism what is not customary to him.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Personal journal

Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

Mark Twain

1896

★ 3.8

Novel

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

Mark Twain

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc · 1896

★ 3.8

Sociology

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Emily Post

1922

★ 3.8

Letter

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

St. Ambrose

St. Augustine, Letter to Casulanus · 397

★ 3.7

Philosophical literature

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Edmund Burke

Philosophical Enquiry in the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful · 1757

★ 3.7

Novel · Coming of age story

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1848

★ 3.7

Poem

Actions receive their tincture from the times, And as they change, are virtues made or crimes.

Daniel Defoe

1703

★ 3.6

Treatise · Legal writing

Whence it is that in our law the goodness of a custom depends upon its having been used time out of mind; or, in the solemnity of our legal phrase, time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

William Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England · 1765

★ 3.6

Open letter · Letter

The 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

1796

★ 3.5

Open letter · Letter · Political literature

Manners are of more importance than laws... 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. They give their whole form and color to our lives.

Edmund Burke

1796

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

There 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

1805

★ 3.5

Political literature

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

Walter Bagehot

1856

★ 3.5

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