Men will tolerate what they are used to, even if it’s intolerance. That’s why I still drink milk, even though I’m lactose intolerant. Mamma didn’t raise no bigot.

Modern Christians should not mistake our post-Victorian sense of propriety for moral purity.

Santa Claus has nothing to do with it,” the latke said. “Christmas and Hanukah are completely different things.””But different things can often blend together,” said the pine tree. “Let me tell you a funny story...

The believer is not a slave to fashion.

The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race’s knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong...

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly...

I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn’t based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn’t true.

But there are times,” said Charlotte, “when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.

Why do you need that thing?” September asked. “None of the airports back home have them.””They do. You just can’t see them right,” Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. “All customs agents have them, otherwise,...

Il est bon de savoir quelque chose des moeurs de divers peuples, afin de juger des notres plus sainement et que nous ne pensions pas que tout ce qui est contre nos modes soit ridicule...

Her name…was Mrs. marina Orlova, and she had grown up in Siberia. Later, she would tell him that she loathed the American custom of constantly smiling: “They are like chimpanzees,” she said, in her bitter...

Customs, morals–is there a difference?

If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative...

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist’s view, ‘justice’ is a search for workable...

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

Now, come over here so I can pat you down.””But you don’t have-” Percy stopped. “Uh, sure.”He stood next to the armless statue. Terminus conducted a rigorous mental pat down.”You seem to be clean,” Terminus...

Love is only surpassing sweet when it is directed toward a mortal object, and the secret of this ultimate sweetness only is defined by the bitterness of death. Thus the white peoples of the world...

All the joys—animal and human—of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into the truth, into nature.