TRADITION
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No one thinks of defending tradition in days that are making tradition, when people feel the past as a force of the present, an auxiliary, a ministrant, a helpmate. One not only defends tradition, one resorts to tradition to fill the void in oneself, when life runs low. And then one grasps only the forms of tradition. Only the husks of tradition remain in one's hands.—VAN WYCK BROOKS, New England: Indian Summer
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It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world.—IBSEN, Ghosts
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Every tradition grows ever more venerable—the more remote is its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.—NIETZSCHE, Human, All Too Human
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The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!—THOREAU, Walden
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