#customs

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 about pagan rituals. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#customs #hanukkah #time #funny

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror. ↗

— Peter Kropotkin

#beneficial #could #customs #enforced #even

Thank God we're going to try to continue and effectively defend our frontiers with the Border Patrol, with the Customs Department, with the Coast Guard, with the Armed Forces. ↗

— Barry McCaffrey

#armed forces #border #border patrol #coast #coast guard

When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff. ↗

— Gary Numan

#big #big news #cared #customs #did

A tendency could not but arise to reconcile with Christian profession a good many modes of life, enjoyments, occupations, social actions and customs, from which the first Christians had recoiled. ↗

— Robert Rainy

#arise #christian #christians #could #customs

Now it is evident that a little insight into the customs of every people is necessary to insure a kindly communication; this, joined with patience and kindness, will seldom fail with the natives of the interior. ↗

— Charles Sturt

#customs #every #evident #fail #insight

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, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#customs #obedience #travel #truth-telling #home

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. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#men

Most men live like raisins in a cake of custom. ↗

— Brand Blanshard

#men

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#habit #nature