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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Mark Twain4 quotes
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either. — Mark Twain · 1897Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. — Mark Twain · 1896To 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 · 1896Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment. — Mark Twain · 1906Edmund Burke3 quotes
Custom reconciles us to everything. — Edmund Burke · 1757The 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 · 1796Manners 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 · 1796Albert Einstein1 quote
Common sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen. — Albert Einstein · 1948Carrie Chapman Catt1 quote
No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion. — Carrie Chapman Catt · 1900Charlotte Bronte1 quote
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 · 1848Cole Porter1 quote
In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything goes. — Cole Porter · 1934Daniel Defoe1 quote
Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And as they change, are virtues made or crimes. — Daniel Defoe · 1703David Hume1 quote
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. — David Hume · 1748Denis Diderot1 quote
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 · 1805Diogenes Laertius1 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 · 240Edward Coke1 quote
How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law. — Edward Coke · 1628Emily Post1 quote
To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule. — Emily Post · 1922Ibn Khaldun1 quote
Man is a child of the customs and the things he has become used to. He is not the product of his natural disposition and temperment. The conditions to which he has become accustomed, until they have become for him a quality of character and matters of habit and custom, have replaced his natural disposition. — Ibn Khaldun · 1377Jane Austen1 quote
One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best. — Jane Austen · 1817John Stuart Mill1 quote
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 · 1869Libosus of Vaga1 quote
The 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 · 400Michel de Montaigne1 quote
Everyone calls barbarism what is not customary to him. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Russell Kirk1 quote
Habit and custom may be the wisdom of unlettered men, but they come from the sound ancient heart of humanity. — Russell Kirk · 1953Ruth Benedict1 quote
The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. — Ruth Benedict · 1934St. Ambrose1 quote
When you are at Rome live in the Roman style: when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere. — St. Ambrose · 397Walter Bagehot1 quote
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 · 1856William Blackstone1 quote
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 · 1765William Graham Sumner1 quote
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 · 1906William Shakespeare1 quote
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 · 1616