Customs

“Woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean.”

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error.”

“Depraved custom is just a kind of general pestilence in which men perish not the less that they fall in a crowd.”

“If you refuse to take account of theory, then you have forgotten that practice is often an offspring of theory.”

“There is no greater tyranny than that of social custom.”

“The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary.”

“A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.”

“Only that he may conformTo (Tyrant) customs.”

“Such dupes are men to custom, and so proneIs kept and guarded as a sacred thing!”

“The slaves of custom and established mode,True to the jingling of our leader's bells.”

“Man yields to custom, as he bows to fate,To them we know not, and we know not why.”

“Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.”

“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.”

“Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be. Custom will render it easy and agreeable.”

“Custom calls me to 't:For truth to o'erpeer.”

“But to my mind, though I am native here,More honor'd in the breach than the observance.”

“That monster, custom, * * * is angel yet in this,That aptly is put on.”

“Nice customs curtesy to great kings.”

“New customs,Nay, let 'em be unmanly, yet are followed.”

“The tyrant custom, most grave senators,My thrice-driven bed of down.”

“The king ...Between a king and virtue.”

“'Tis nothing when you are used to it.”

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new;Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

“No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.”

“Private customs, indeed, are still to be sought from private tradition.”

“Proof of the usage of a large capital such as London, is sufficient to show that of the whole world unless it is contradicted.”

“The custom of the city of London is a matter of fact.”

“We shall go according to the constant usage within memory.”

“You say it was in the Saxons' time; you do not come to any time within 600 years; you speak of those times wherein things were obscure.”

“In many cases a party undertakes to prove a custom from the time of legal memory, the reign of Richard the Second; but that proof is generally established by evidence of acts done at a much later period, and frequently no evidence is given beyond the present century.”

“There can be very few cases, where a custom has been sufficiently proved, in which a Court could hold that it was unreasonable, for that it must be convenient is shown by the fact that it has been established and followed.”

“I cannot draw a distinction as to what length of time will render a practice legal.”

“I know not how or where to ascertain when an usage becomes of age.”

“As usage is a good interpreter of the laws, so non-usage, where there is no example, is a great intendment that the law will not bear it.”

“Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”

“If the custom be general, it is the law of the realm: if local only, it is lex loci, the law of the place. Now, all laws are general, as far as the law extends; and all customs of England are of course, immemorial.1 No usage, therefore, can be part of that law, or have the force of a custom, that is not immemorial.”

“Whatever may be the effect of the prevailing fashions of the times, I do not think that the argument of inconvenience, arising out of those fashions, can at any time be relied upon against a current of decisions.”

“All customs must be supposed to have had a good commencement, unless they appear to be inconsistent or against reason.”

“Customs which are consistent may be pleaded against each other.”