Quotes about Tradition

Our own poor poets, I am afraid, have been so intimidated by our clinics and laboratories that they have abandoned the first principles of beginning, that of the festival; and the heart of the festival has always been the atmosphere of myth, of delight.

The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

Unspontaneity is of their essence. In these rites I discover that something is approaching me here that I did not produce myself, that I am entering into something greater than myself, which ultimately derives from divine revelation. This is why the Christian East calls the liturgy the "Divine Liturgy", expressing thereby the liturgy's independence from human control.

Deeper understanding of the matter is bound to recognize that the Temple, as well as the synagogue, entered into Christian liturgy.

The empire of custom is most mighty.

Divorce these days is a religious vow, as if the proper offspring of marriage.

The tradition is a fence around the law; tithes are a fence around riches; vows are a fence around abstinence; a fence around wisdom is silence.

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

Personally, I always loved the 1 p.m. Sunday games.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

I find that whatever is old corrupts, and the past turns to snakes. The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.