Henry David Thoreau Tradition Quotations

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.

The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.

Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?