Custom

Famous quotes containing the word custom:

    “People who love only once in their lives are ... shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failures.”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    “The laws of custom make our [returning a visit] necessary. O how I hate this vile custom which obliges us to make slaves of ourselves! to sell the most precious property we boast, our time;—and to sacrifice it to every prattling impertinent who chooses to demand it!”
    —Frances Burney (1752–1840)

    “Cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone; and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)