Quotes
Quotes about Tradition
I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition's shown;
And all that history, much that fiction weaves.
Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.
Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill,--the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows,--when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work.
The vocation of poet had traditionally been permitted to excuse too much.
A work of art is traditionally characterized in terms of unity of conception and execution
If we take away plot, character, dialogue, even characters, we shall be left with something that is common to the most traditional and avant-garde novelist - a concern with interpreting, through the imagination, the flux of ordinary life; an attempt to understand, though not with the cold deliberation of the scientist, the nature of the external world and the mind that surveys it
No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations.
I didn't have any interest in traditional art.
Journalism has always existed in two different realities . . . the economic marketplace and [the] special institution to serve the public interest. The traditional balance between those two has become destabilized. Economic reality has taken over.
Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
We cannot expect people to take seriously our belief in objective truth if, in our practice, we indicate only a quantitative difference between all men who are in ecclesiastical structures or who use theological language. I do not mean that we should not have open dialogue with men; my words and practice emphasize that I believe love demands it. But I do mean that we should not give the impression in our practice that, just because they are expressed in traditional Christian terminology, all religious concepts are on a graduated, quantitative spectrumâthat, in regard to central doctrine, no chasm exists between right and wrong.
God has called the laity to be his basic ministers. He has called some to be "player-coaches" ... to equip the laity for the ministry they are to fulfill. This equipping ministry is of unique importance. One is appointed to this ministry by the Holy Spirit; therefore it must be undertaken with utmost seriousness. This is a radical departure from the traditional understanding of the roles of the laity and the clergy. The laity had the idea that they were already committed to a "full-time" vocation in the secular world, [and] thus they did not have timeâat least, much timeâto do God's work. Therefore they contributed money to "free" the clergy to have the time needed to fulfill God's ministry. This view is rank heresy. If we follow this pattern, we may continue to do God's work until the Lord comes again and never fulfill God's purpose as it ought to be done.
Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: The philosopher [Immanuel] Kant was right long ago to notice that moral activity implies a religious dimension. The atheist [Friedrich] Nietzsche also saw the point and argued forcefully that the person who gives up belief in God must be consistent and give up Christian morals as well, because the former is the foundation of the latter. He had nothing but contempt for fellow humanists who refused to see that Christian morality cannot survive the loss of its theological moorings, except as habit or as lifeless tradition. As Ayn Rand also sees so clearly, love of the neighbor cannot be rationally justified within the framework of secular humanism. Love for one's neighbor is an ethical implication of the Christian position. This suggests to me that the world's deepest problem is not economic or technological, but spiritual and moral. What is missing is the vision of reality that can sustain the neighbor-oriented life style that is so urgently needed in our world today.
For the ancient philosopher and priest of esoteric cults, steeped in the tradition of Classical Greek, the grammatical forms in the Lord's Prayer would seem almost rude. One does not find the optative forms of polite petition so characteristic of elaborate requests made to earthly and heavenly potentates. Rather than employing such august forms, the Christians made their requests to God in what seem to be blunt imperatives. This does not mean that Christians lacked respect for their heavenly father, but it does mean that they were consistent with a new understanding of Him. In the tens of thousands of papyri fragments which have been rescued from the rubbish heaps of the ancient Greek world, one finds the imperative forms used constantly between members of a family. When the Christians addressed God as "Father," it was perfectly natural therefore for them to talk to Him as intimately as they would to their own father. Unfortunately, the history of our own English language has almost reversed this process. Originally, men used "thou" and "thee" in prayer because it was the appropriate familiar form of address; but now these words have become relegated to prayer alone.
You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer. It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing. .. Luis Palau March 14, 2001 Most evangelicals believe that if a passage of the Bible seems unclear in its meaning, it should be interpreted in the light of Scripture "as a whole". But what does "Scripture as a whole" mean? In practice, if not theory, it means the working systematic theology of the interpreter, or of his own theological tradition. An evangelical... would not hold to that tradition unless he believed that it did represent the wholeness of the biblical witness. Nevertheless, if this state of affairs has been correctly described, he is now in a serious difficulty. For if the Bible must always accord with a theology that has already been accepted, how can the truth of a biblical passage ever confront him afresh with an unfavorable judgment?
Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian will be anxious to point out that the classical images which have been used, with more or less success, to depict different aspects of the Redemptionâthe winning of a battle, the liberation of captives, the payment of a fine or debt, the curing of a disease, and so onâare not to be interpreted literally, any more than, when we say that the eternal Word "came down from Heaven", we are describing a process of spatial translation. For here we are dealing with processes and events which, by the nature of the case, cannot be precisely described in everyday language... The matter is quite different with such a statement as that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary; for, whatever aspects of the Incarnation outstrip the descriptive power of ordinary language, this at least is plainly statable in it. It means that Jesus was conceived in his mother's womb without previous sexual intercourse on her part with any male human being, and this is a straightforward statement which is either true or false. To say that the birth... of Jesus Christ cannot simply be thought of as a biological event, and to add that this is [not] what the Virgin Birth means, is a plain misuse of language; and no amount of talk about the appealing character of the "Christmas myth" can validly gloss this over.
The traditional worship setting is both the inspiration for faith and fellowship, and the barrier to it. Due only to Word and SacramentâGod's ideasâis there any faith to be shared or truth to articulate. However, the very setting in which this is received instills the fear of expressing it informally.
Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord Ideological notions are strongest amongst people who have lost their traditional religious faith, and they provide a kind of pseudo-religion to take its place. Ideology may well be defined as religion-substitute. The fact that religious faith expresses itself in the particular ideological forms current in any given period is no reason why we should confuse religion with ideology; and, even though it requires a penetrating and candid investigation to distinguish between the genuinely religious and the merely ideological elements in the outlook of a particular period or individual, this does not mean that religion itself is an aspect of ideology. The core of religious belief is not ideological, whatever may be said of the soft pulp in which it is wrapped up.
A world community can exist only with world communication, which means something more than extensive shortwave facilities scattered about the globe. It means common understanding, a common tradition, common ideas, and common ideals.
Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relationships with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first line attention.
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
Imagination continually frustrates tradition, that is its function. -John Pfeiffer.
My very first lessons in the art of telling stories took place in the kitchen . . . my mother and three or four of her friends. . . told stories. . . with effortless art and technique. They were natural-born storytellers in the oral tradition.
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition.
Ceremony and ritual spring from our heart of hearts: those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.
