Once is no custom. [ Proverb ]
Custom is another nature. [ Proverb ]
Custom is observed as law. [ Law ]
Custom is the law of fools. [ Vanburgh ]
As the world leads we follow. [ Seneca ]
Custom makes all things easy. [ Proverb ]
Custom is held to be as a law. [ Law Maxim ]
The command of custom is great. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Custom reconciles to everything. [ Burke ]
Custom does often reason overrule. [ Rochester ]
Experience is the mother of custom. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Custom doth make dotards of us all. [ Carlyle ]
How use doth breed a habit in a man! [ William Shakespeare ]
The empire of custom is most mighty. [ Publius Syrus ]
Once in use and ever after a custom. [ Proverb ]
Custom is the guide of the ignorant. [ Proverb ]
Ancient custom is always held as law. [ Law ]
The breach of custom is breach of all. [ William Shakespeare ]
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. [ William Shakespeare ]
Custom is the best interpreter of laws. [ Law Maxim ]
A cask and an ill custom must be broken. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A deep meaning often lies in old Customs. [ Schiller ]
New customs,
Though they be never so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are followed [ William Shakespeare ]
The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down. [ William Shakespeare ]
Truth is truth, in spite of custom's heart. [ Proverb ]
It is hard to break an old hog of a custom. [ Proverb ]
Custom, 'tis true, a venerable tyrant
Over servile man extends her blind dominion. [ Thomson ]
Man yields to custom as he bows to fate,
In all things ruled--mind, body, and estate;
In pain, in sickness, we for cure apply
To them we know not, and we know not why. [ Crabbe ]
Man yields to custom as he bows to fate.
In all things ruled - mind, body and estate;
In pain or sickness, we for cure apply
To them we know not, and we know not why. [ Crabbe ]
Custom is generally too hard for conscience. [ Proverb ]
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think. [ Cowper ]
Old custom without truth is but an old error. [ Proverb ]
Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil. [ Schiller ]
Custom without reason is but an ancient error. [ Proverb ]
A cake and a bad custom are fated to be broken. [ French Proverb ]
For through the south the custom still commands
The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands. [ Byron ]
Custom forms us all.
Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief
Are consequences of our place of birth. [ Hill ]
Ancient custom is always held or regarded as law. [ Law Maxim ]
Custom calls me to it -
What custom wills, in all things should we do it? [ William Shakespeare ]
Conform to common custom, and not to common folly. [ Proverb ]
The slaves of custom and established mode,
With pack-horse constancy, we keep the road
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells,
True to the jingling of our leader's bells. [ Cowper ]
The custom of the manor and the place must be observed. [ Law Maxim ]
Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools. [ Proverb ]
The way of the world is to make laws but follow customs. [ Montaigne ]
A custom - More honoured in the breach than the observance. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
That dog barks more out of custom than of care of the house. [ Proverb ]
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none. [ Fielding ]
It is a custom. More honored in the breach than the observance. [ William Shakespeare ]
Flattery, which was formerly a vice, is now grown into a custom. [ Publius Syrus ]
Custom is the tyranny of the lower human faculties over the higher. [ Mme. Necker ]
Absurdities are great or small in proportion to custom or insuetude. [ Landor ]
Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error. [ Cyprian ]
Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship at the expense of truth. [ Zimmermann ]
To keep a custom, you hammer the anvil still, though you have no iron. [ Proverb ]
Custom, which diminishes the intense, increases the moderate, pleasures. [ Ramsay ]
Pitch upon the best course of life, and custom will render it the most easy. [ Tillotson ]
Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar. [ De La Bruyere ]
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use.
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing! [ Cowper ]
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted. [ Bovee ]
The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest. [ Franklin ]
There is nothing more nearly permanent in human life than a well established custom. [ Joseph Anderson ]
Man yields to custom as he bows to fate, - in all things ruled, mind, body, and estate. [ Crabbe ]
Habit with him was all the test of truth, It must be right: I've done it from my youth.
[ Crabbe ]
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. [ Montaigne ]
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd. [ Charlotte Bronte ]
How many women would laugh at the funerals of their husbands, if it were not the custom to weep!
The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come. [ Dante ]
Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be. Custom will render it easy and agreeable. [ Pythagoras ]
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The requirements of health, and the style of female attire which custom enjoins are in direct antagonism to each other. [ Abba Goold Woolson ]
The influence of custom is incalculable; dress a boy as a man and he will at once change his own conception of himself. [ Bayle St. John ]
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow. So arbitrary are these transient laws. [ Dumas ]
From a common custom of swearing men easily slide into perjury; therefore, if thou wouldst not be perjured, do not use thyself to swear. [ Hierocles ]
The custom of frequent reflection will keep their minds from running adrift, and call their thoughts home from useless unattentive roving. [ Locke ]
Can there be any greater dotage in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment. [ Rabelais ]
Seamen have a custom when they meet a whale to fling out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. [ Swift ]
Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions; but generally act according to custom. [ Bacon ]
Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant. [ Henry Home ]
Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
A young woman should regard that propriety of attire which insures the strictest neatness, and modestly conform to those unobjectionable points which are the freaks of custom. [ C. Butler ]
We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of our Freethinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned. [ Carlyle ]
Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely in it; what custom hath civilized is become decent, till then ridiculous; where the eye is the jury thy apparel is the evidence. [ Quarles ]
Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain. [ Dr. Johnson ]
By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to appear without. [ Adam Smith ]
When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move, as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest. [ Colton ]
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash - for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present. [ Colton ]
People who love once in their lives are really shallow people. What they call their loyalty and their fidelity is either the lethargy of custom or lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what constancy is to the intellectual life, simply a confession of failure. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature. [ Pascal ]
Be not too rash in the breaking of an inconvenient custom; as it was gotten, so leave it by degrees. Danger attends upon too sudden alterations; he that pulls down a bad building by the great may be ruined by the fall, but he that takes it down brick by brick may live to build a better. [ Quarles ]
The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony declined with paganism, but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. [ Disraeli ]
Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. [ Montaigne ]