Wise Quotes about Traditional

Overflowing Cup of Tea:
The Zen Master poured his visitor's teacup full, and then kept pouring.
The visitor watched until he could no longer restrain himself.
"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," the Zen Master said,
"you are full of your own opinions and assumptions.
How can you learn truth until you first empty your cup?"
- Traditional Zen Koan

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

A son is a son till he takes him a wife,
a daughter is a daughter all of her life.
- Irish Traditional

We return thanks to our mother,
the earth, which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams
which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines
for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters,
the beans and squashes, which give us life.
We return thanks to the bushes and trees,
which provide us with fruit.
We return thanks to the wind,
which, moving the air, has banished diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and the stars,
which have given us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to our grandfather He-no,
that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles,
and has given us his rain.
We return thanks to the sun,
that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit,
in whom is embodied all goodness,
and who directs all things for the good of his children.
- Iroquois traditional

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the sweet uplifting rush,
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft starts that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still in each new dawn.
- Traditional Native American Prayer

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy

Who has fully realized that history
is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood?
- Carl Jung

Re-examine all that you have been told...
dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman

The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper

Nothing is ever absolutely "wrong."
"Wrong" is in the cultural tradition of the beholder.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison

Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is more dangerous to tradition
than the creative imagination of youth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You can't move so fast that you try to change
the mores faster than people can accept it.
That doesn't mean you do nothing,
but it means that you do the things that
need to be done according to priority.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Let reason trump tradition and the opinions of others,
but let your own sense of what is Right trump even reason.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best -
and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Stephen Jay Gould

No written law has ever been more binding
than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
- Carrie Chapman Catt

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain

The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards
our dwellings shape us.
- Winston Churchill

Trumpet in a herd of elephants;
crow in the company of cocks;
bleat in a flock of goats.
- Malayan Proverb

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes
which a man can change at will - and put on at will?
Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Tradition is like a second-hand store.
It is best to sort carefully
between the treasures and the trash.
See everything with new eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry

Do not let spacious plans for a new world
divert your energies from saving
what is left of the old.
- Winston Churchill

Mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.
- Thomas Jefferson

This overcoming of all the usual barriers
between the individual and the Absolute
is the great mystic achievement.
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute
and we become aware of our oneness.
This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,
hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
- William James

In this outward and physical ceremony,
we attest once again to the inner
and spiritual strength of our Nation.
As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say:
"We must adjust to changing times,
and still hold to unchanging principles."
- Jimmy Carter

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

Customs do not concern themselves
with right or wrong or reason.
But they have to be obeyed;
one reasons all around them until he is tired,
but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
- Mark Twain

Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain

In many ways, it is easier to be a good giver than a good receiver.
The giver chooses the gift and the timing.
More important, societal and religious traditions
tend to elevate the status of giver and lower the status of receiver.
When the Bible (Acts 20:32-35) speaks of it being
more blessed to give than to receive,
I believe that a better translation might be
"take" rather than "receive," as the context
of that passage is "coveting."
Certainly there is nothing blessed about coveting,
stealing, begging, or demanding,
however the skill of graciously receiving a freely offered gift
is another matter entirely.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You hold onto religion, you know,
rules, regulations, traditions.
I think what God is interested in
is people's hearts, and that's hard enough.
- Bono

All major religious traditions
carry basically the same message,
that is love, compassion and forgiveness.
The important thing is they should
be part of our daily lives.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

I choose to adapt to the circumstances in which I find myself.
I choose to be flexible in my dealings with those around me.
I understand that my way is not the only way -
that inner peace comes from respecting the ways of others,
and that, if I am open, I may gain great insights and happiness
from the ideas and traditions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is defined more by its contrasts than its samenesses;
Life is defined more by its risks than the many securities.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As every divided kingdom falls,
so every mind divided between
many studies confounds and saps itself.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

Many people allow their need
for other people's approval to control their lives.
They spend their lives worrying about what others think of them.
- Rick Warren

Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life
are not only not indispensable,
but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
- Henry David Thoreau

Many persons have a wrong idea of
what constitutes true happiness.
It is not attained through self-gratification
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller

Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau

Too many people overvalue what they are not,
and undervalue what they are.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

After climbing a great hill,
one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
- Nelson Mandela

All the great things are simple,
and many can be expressed in a single word:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
- Winston Churchill

A man can fail many times,
but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame somebody else.
- John Burroughs

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Wisdom Quotes