Breaking Old Traditions Quotes

We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible. "At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost - not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind. "It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him. ~ Philip K. Dick

My real desire is to see people live in the modus of our time, to participate in the contemporary world, to release themselves from nostalgia, antiquated traditions, old rituals, meaningless kitsch, and that we be conscious and sensorially attuned to this world in this moment that we are alive. ~ Karim Rashid

The baron reminds me of someone, but I can't quite put my finger on who it is," Ramsey remarked.
"I swear my own father never talked to me the way Gillian's uncle just did."
"Your father died before you were old enough to know him."
"It was humiliating, damn it. He sure as certain wasn't what I expected. The way Gillian talked about him, I pictured a mild-mannered gentleman. She thinks he's ... gentle. Is the woman blind? How in God's name can she love such a crotchety old ... "
Ramsey's head snapped up, and he suddenly burst into laughter, breaking Brodick's train of thought. "It's you."
"What?"
"Morgan ... he reminds me of you. My God, Gillian married a man just like her uncle. Look at the baron and you'll see yourself in twenty years."
"Are you suggesting I'm going to become a belligerent, foul-tempered old man?"
"Hell, you're already belligerent and foul-tempered. No wonder she fell in love with you," he drawled ~ Julie Garwood

After the sudden release of the laughter, he was trembling. All his body seemed growing weak. He felt, almost physically, more barriers breaking
those necessary barriers of defense, built up through the months of loneliness and desperation. He must touch another human being, and he put forward his hand in the old conventional gesture of the handshake. She took it, and doubtless as she noticed his trembling, she drew him toward a chair and almost pushed him into it. As he sat down, she patted his shoulder lightly.
She spoke again, once more neither questioning nor commanding: "I'll get you something to eat."
He did not protest, though he had just eaten heartily. But he knew that behind her quiet affirmation lay something more than any call of the body for food. There was need now for the symbolic eating together, that first common bond of human beings
the sitting at the same table, the sharing of bread and salt. ~ George R. Stewart

What is new in all of this is that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, professions, institutions, and historical traditions are losing their attraction. ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council, and her Treasury, Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till sad the breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent. Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honoured Margaret. ~ John Milton

The world," said Pavone, "will swing to the left. The whole world except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that American will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure ... ~ Irwin Shaw

Before his death your father begged a promise from me. He made me swear that I would look after you and your mother."
"And you have," she insisted.
He held up his hand to prevent her from saying more. "And made me give my word that I would never touch you in any manner other than brotherly." Another rueful smile. "So you see, I preferred being able to pretend that I had kept my promise rather than face the truth of breaking my word."
He broke her heart, damn him. "He made me promise not to become attached to you," she confided, continuing with the evening's truthful trend. "It seems Papa saw something that neither one of us did."
"Oh, I saw it. I've seen it since you were eighteen years old and we danced together at some insipid ball. I don't remember where it was, or the day of the week, but I remember that you wore a pale tea-colored gown with Belgian lace, and that you had pearls in your hair."
She couldn't breathe. The tilt of his lips, the bleakness of his gaze, it was all too horrible. "And you wore a red cravat," she whispered. "I thought you looked so rakish in it."
"I was rakish," he admitted. "Your father knew that. ~ Kathryn Smith

As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising up around me, The old world of houses, rooms, trees and streets shimmers, wavers and tears away, revealing another universe as startling as fire. We are shut off from the fullness of things. Words hide the world. They blur together elements that exist apart, or they break elements into pieces bind up the world, contract it into hard little pellets of perception. But the unbound world, the world behind the world – how fluid it is, how lovely and dangerous. At rare moments of clarity, I succeed in breaking through. Then I see. I see a place where nothing is known, because nothing is shaped in advance by words. There, nothing is hidden from me. There, every object presents itself entirely, with all its being. It's as if, looking at a house, you were able to see all four sides and both roof slopes. But then, there's no "house," no "object," no form that stops at a boundary, only a stream of manifold, precise, and nameless sensations, shifting into one another, pullulating, a fullness, a flow. Stripped of words, untamed, the universe pours in on me from every direction. I become what I see. I am earth, I am air. I am all. My eyes are suns. My hair streams among the galaxies. ~ Steven Millhauser

The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons. ~ Starhawk

Safe-breaking and vault-breaking are at least as old as the pyramids and burial chambers of Egypt. Poking holes in vaults and safes for profit appears to be as durable as greed. ~ James Chiles

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. ~ Michel Foucault

Perhaps our greatest concern is with families. The family is falling apart all over the world. The old ties that bound together father and mother and children are breaking everywhere. We must face this in our own midst. There are too many broken homes among our own. The love that led to marriage somehow evaporates, and hatred fills its place. Hearts are broken, children weep ... ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Have you ever considered, for even a moment, the list of things I'm not allowed to do because some bitter old men say so? I can't lead a mass, can't earn the greens of a priest, let alone claim my birthright. My entire life, from the cradle to the grave, is dictated by 'traditions' and rules that you aren't subject to. My power was taken away from me the moment I was born a woman. So no, you do not get to give me permission to cry!" "I'm ~ Craig Schaefer

The ceremonies that persist - birthdays, weddings, funerals - focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]
We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?
Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they're about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I'm 27 years old. I'm going to go into Hollywood really arrogant. I'll be breaking a lot of rules. It's going to be hot. ~ Wyclef Jean

Hey you ! out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me
Hey you ! Standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me
Hey you ! don't help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.
Hey you ! out there on your own
sitting naked by the phone would you touch me
Hey you ! with your ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me
Hey you ! would you help me to carry the stone
Open your heart, I'm coming home
But it was only a fantasy
The wall was too high as you can see
No matter how he tried he could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain.
Hey you ! out there on the road
Always doing what you're told, can you help me
Hey you ! out there beyond the wall
Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me
Hey you ! don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall. ~ Pink Floyd

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century exponents of prefabrication were certain it would supplant age-old traditions of individualized design and handcrafted construction. The building art would be revolutionized by freeing designers and construction workers from repetitive tasks, and democratized by making high-style architecture more affordable. ~ Martin Filler

I had believed myself superior to my ancestors. But all it took was the proper amount of pain for me to return to the traditions of old. For even thinking such a thing, I am sorry. I apologize to you as a Wakandian, as a human being, and I apologize to my nation. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

The struggle between Jews and zombies would drag on, itself zombie-like, unless they found a way to pass beyond Jews and Zombies. The future. She was the future. New blood, and a new beginning. Breaking the old wheel of tradition. Helix and double-helix, and the doubling was a necessary part of the helix. She ~ Rebecca Levene

He philosophy of Islam will be shown in terms of the modern philosophy, and if there are imperfections in the old ideas then they shall be removed. My task is merely constructive, and in this construction I shall take into consideration the best traditions of Islamic philosophy. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

When relationships have outlived their shelf life, people often realize that at some level, they are sticking it our because they once thought in the light of their divine love that the other person would change. Sorry for breaking the poetic hope here, but that doesn't happen. People are like rubber bands. They may be able to stretch from time to time and do some amazing things, but in general they are who they are. If manipulation and machinations on your side get them to behave the way you want, I will set my clock on the fact that they will return to their previous way of behaving, or they will keep faking it. To be in a relationship with someone who is not really there doesn't make sense. People who aren't cooperating feel like a project to us, like something for us to rescue or fix. Rescuing is the province of firefighters and fairy tales, but it's not real life. The stance of sticking it out in hopes of redemption is an old story and one that has wasted many lives. ~ Ramani Durvasula

But for a moment I had sat on the turf somewhere high above the flow of the sea and the sound of the woods, had seen the house, the garden, and the waves breaking. The old nurse who turns the pages of the picture book had stopped and had said, 'Look. This is the truth. ~ Virginia Woolf

When I was twelve years old, I looked in the mirror and I saw what I perceived to be my faults and my mother's faults. These coalesced into a dark mark that I would carry through my life, a coating of what I saw, which came from others' hatred of me, and all this forested a hatred of myself. I thought being unwanted and abandoned and persecuted was the legacy of the poor southern Black woman. But as an adult, I see my mother's legacy anew. I see how all the burdens she bore, the burdens of her history and identity and of our country's history and identity , enable her to manifest her greatest gifts. My mother had the courage to look at four hungry children and find a way to fill them. My mother had the strength to work her body to its breaking point to provide for herself and her children. My mother had the residence to cobble together a family from the broken bits of another. And my mother's example teaches me other things: This how a transplanted people survived a holocaust and slavery. This is how Black people in the South organized to vote under the shadow of terrorism and the noose. This is how human begins sleep and wake and fight and survive. In the end, this is a how a mother teaches her daughter to have courage, to have strength, to be resilient, to open her eyes to what it is, and to make something of it. ~ Jesmyn Ward

MY MOST CONSTANT and vivid memory is not so much of the people but of the actual house in Aracataca where I lived with my grandparents. It's a recurring dream which persists even now. What's more, every single day of my life I wake up with the feeling, real or imaginary, that I've dreamed I'm in that huge old house. Not that I've gone back there but that I am there, at no particular age, for no particular reason - as if I'd never left it. Even now in my dreams that sense of night-time foreboding which dominated my whole childhood still persists. It was an uncontrollable sensation which began early every evening and gnawed away at me in my sleep until I saw dawn breaking through the cracks in the door. ~ Gerald Martin

There's so much myth and baloney. Like a 80-year-old man able to manhandle a 300-pounder with his little finger. Ridiculous. Or this matter of breaking bricks and boards wth the edge of your hand. Now I ask you, did you ever see a brick or a board pick a fight with anybody? ~ Bruce Lee

Abolishing centuries old traditions of the prosperous South, seemed to motivate their envious souls into annihilating what looked to the world, God's Heaven on Earth. ~ Max Connelly

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother
her incomparable mother!
five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! ... Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night
and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here
writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? ~ Mark Twain

Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred. ~ Daniel De Leon

I think,to add to the festive occasion, we ought to turn on the lights and siren." He turned to Delia. "What do you say?"
"Oh,heavens,no." She covered her mouth with her hand before giving it a second thought. "Sorry.That was the old Delia. The new Delia says yes.That would be so exciting."
Beside her,Marilee said sternly, "The old Marilee says you'll be breaking the law."
Wyatt winked. "This old rebel says he doesn't care. A celebration requires some noise."
The two exchanged a long look, then broke out into peals of laughter.
As they sped along the open highway, lights flashing,siren blasting, Delia found herself laughing along with them in absolute delight. Despite all the heartache,and all the turmoil,she was sharing a ride with Coot's grandson, heading out to Coot's ranch for the first time in over fifty years,and having the time of her life. ~ R.C. Ryan

Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and you'd wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and more recently, text or e-mail), but that would require that person's knowing you were thinking of him or her. Where's the fun in that? You never want them to know you're thinking of them, so you refrain. Before long the memories start to fade. One day, you realize you can't quite remember how she smelled or the exact color of his eyes. Eventually, without ever knowing it, you just forget that person altogether. You replace old memories with new ones, and life goes on. It was the clean break you needed to move forward. ~ Brandi Glanville

I remember first learning about death quite vividly.

I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me.

'Sometimes, when someone gets ill, and they're very very old, they don't get better again. They just get iller and iller and then... then their body stops working.'

'I don't understand.'

'What's in them just goes away, and doesn't come back.'

'Grandpa isn't coming back?'

'No,' she said. 'Not ever again.'

'Grandpa said he was going away and not ever coming back after he held Grandma's head in that cotton-dump outside of town and kicked Skeeter seventy-three times.'

'Grandpa was very drunk. That's not the same as being dead. Grandpa's dead, son. He's not there anymore.'

And I remember saying, 'Hold everything right fucking THERE.

'You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and feeding me and clothing me and all-- and, YEAH, whipping me from time to time, and making me live in a house that's freezing fucking cold all the goddamn time-- and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to do and sometimes I just want to scream-- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head-- I go through all ~ Warren Ellis

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The old-school Italians turned out to be a lot like Shadows: closed off to outsiders, proud of their traditions, suspicious of people they didn't know. But once you were in with them? Once you proved yourself and were accepted? They were so loyal and generous it was almost like they weren't humans at all.
In fact, to him, proper Italians had become a subspecies apart from the other rats without tails on the planet. ~ J.R. Ward

The world will try to make you think that being good is outdated and old-fashioned and that popularity comes from breaking the rules and lowering your standards. Don't buy into that way of thinking. As you watch TV or read magazines, you might be made to feel abnormal when, really, you are the one who has it figured out. ~ Margaret D. Nadauld

It's an old Camorri tradition for when a bunch of people are planning something stupid," said Locke. "Actually, we have a lot of traditions for that. You'll find out ~ Scott Lynch

Don't allow old traditions to become permanent mental scripts for managing your life in the present. Reason: you will not be able to transform yourself to think differently and be better as you grow with age and maturity. ~ Darren L Johnson

This game still had its old ritual fascination for Pug; he was following it tensely, smoking a cigar. Once his nostalgia had been keen for the tough youthful combat on the grass, the slamming of bodies, the tricky well-drilled plays, above all for the rare moments of breaking free and sprinting down the field, dodging one man and another with the stands around him a roaring sea of voices. Nothing in his life had since been quite like it. But long ago that nostalgia had departed; those grooves of memory had worn out. To think that lads much younger than his own two sons were out on that chilly field in Philadelphia now, made Victor Henry feel that he had led a very long, multilayered existence, and was now almost a living mummy. Pug! ~ Herman Wouk

On all levels, evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking down or are not working anymore. On a personal level, this often means the experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of security. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The sound of old winter ice breaking at spring's touch, ~ Raymond E. Feist

The old Catholic church traditions are worth more than all you have said. Here is a principle of logic that most men have no more sense than to adopt. I will illustrate it by an old apple tree. Here jumps off a branch and says, I am the true tree, and you are corrupt. If the whole tree is corrupt, are not its branches corrupt? If the Catholic religion is a false religion, how can any true religion come out of it? If the Catholic church is bad, how can any good thing come out of it? ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

The Bible is the torch of civilization and liberty. Its influence for good in society has been recognized by the greatest statesmen, even though they for the most part have looked at it through the various glasses of conflicting creeds, which, while upholding the Bible, grievously misrepresent its teachings. The grand old book is unintentionally but woefully misrepresented by its friends, many of whom would lay down life on its behalf; and yet they do it more vital injury than its foes, by claiming its support to their long-revered misconceptions of its truth, received through the traditions of their fathers. Would that such would awake, re-examine their oracle, and put to confusion its enemies by disarming them of their weapons!
[...] The fact that this book has survived so many centuries, notwithstanding such unparalleled efforts to banish and destroy it, is at least strong circumstantial evidence that the great Being whom it claims as its Author has also been its Preserver.
It is also true that the moral influence of the Bible is uniformly good. Those who become careful students of its pages are invariably elevated to a purer life. Other writings upon religion and the various sciences have done good and have ennobled and blessed mankind, to some extent; but all other books combined have failed to bring the joy, peace and blessing to the groaning creation that the Bible has brought to both the rich and the poor, to the learned and the unlearned. ~ Charles Taze Russell

Gardening Work

There was a man breaking up the ground, getting ready to plant, when

another man came by, "Why are you ruining this land?" "Don't interfere. Nothing can grow here

until the earth is turned over and crumbled. There can be no roses and no orchard without

first this devastation. You must lance an ulcer to heal.
You must tear down parts of

an old building to restore it." So it is with the sensual life that has no spirit. A person must

face the dragon of his or her appetites with another dragon, the life energy of the soul. When

that's not strong, everyone seems to be full of fear and wanting, as one thinks

the room is spinning when one's whirling around. If your love has contracted into anger, the

atmosphere itself feels threatening, but when you're expansive and clear, no matter

what the weather, you're in an open windy field with friends. Many people travel as far as Syria

and Iraq and meet only hypocrites. Others go all the way to India and see only people buying and selling.

Others travel to Turkestan and China to discover those countries are full of cheats

and sneak thieves. You always see the qualities that live in you. A cow may walk

through the amazing city of Baghdad and notice only a watermelon rind and a tuft of hay

that fell off a wagon. Don't repeatedly keep doing what your lowest self ~ Rumi

Jesus is arguing for the Trinitarian concept of divine diversity as being compatible with Old Testament monotheism, which was not compatible with man-made traditions of absolute monotheism that Rabbinic Jews followed. Remember, in the Bible, the concept of "god" (elohim) was about a plane of existence not necessarily a "being" of existence, so there were many gods (many elohim) that existed on that supernatural plane, yet only one God of gods who created all things, including those other elohim or sons of God. ~ Brian Godawa