Get off your horse and drink your milk.

Living animals are too eccentric in their movements, and the law of gravitation usually draws me from my seat upon them to a lower level; therefore, I am not an inveterate lover of horseback.

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass – the slave narrative – speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying ‚I,‘ meaning ‚we.‘

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

I have spent every New Year’s Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It’s a place with meaning for me.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.

I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason – to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.

My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

I don’t travel with them, but they can’t be missing in my home. There have to always be dominoes… I used to play with my family – dad, my grandpa, my uncles.

A fool and his money are soon elected.

A word to the wise is infuriating.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

Opportunity makes a thief.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

Geologists have a saying – rocks remember.

Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you’re 52.

All great peoples are conservative.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

A lot of churches have not moved with the times.

I love Velveeta cheese.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use – a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

There was a time when people said, ‚Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.‘ Now they just say, ‚Pay him!‘

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

Hunger is the best pickle.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.