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Tradition   /trədˈɪʃən/   Listen
Tradition

noun
1.
An inherited pattern of thought or action.
2.
A specific practice of long standing.  Synonym: custom.



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"Tradition" Quotes from Famous Books



... host being punished afterwards by some of Cromwell's soldiers and the malcontents of Birmingham besieging the place in the week after Christmas, 1643. The brick wall round the park, nearly three miles long, but of which there are now few traces left, was put up by Sir Lister Holte about 1750, and tradition says it was paid for by some Staffordshire coal-masters, who, supposing that coal lay underneath, conditioned with Sir Lister that no mines should be sunk within [word missing—presume "its"] boundary. The Hall and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... first vice-president of the National Association, in responding said: "Now we know definitely that all the things we have heard about Kentucky are true; we have met her brave women and handsome colonels. While we remember all the tradition of the past we live in the present. Kentucky is proud of what her men named Clay have done in the past but it is a pleasure to us to know that today when Kentucky wants anything done she appeals to a woman who is either Clay by name or Clay by blood." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... belle of the neighborhood, and known in tradition as Washington's first love, was born in the "Manor House" July 3, 1730. Washington first met her on a visit to New York in 1756, after his return from Braddock's campaign, as guest of Beverly Robinson, who had ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... This "Mela," feast, religious pilgrimage, whatever it might mean to these endless multitudes, is held here at stated times because the two sacred rivers, the Jumna and the Ganges, come together at Allahabad, and tradition has it that a third river flows beneath the surface to meet the others. So the place is trebly sacred, its waters potent for purification, no matter how ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... with her own point carried, saw no reason why she should not add a shovelful of symbolic earth herself. Thus, beginning with a trickle, the flow of her good humor presently broadened to the width of the sluice-gate, as she entered upon an absorbing scrutiny of the quaint old house which by tradition had served one of the earlier governors. It was a rambling structure of unexpected turns and endless alcoves stored with curios, art treasures, and ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... marble,—but sadly often it was ice; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it could not be put away in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud family tradition, like the alabaster, or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt, and shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless and useless water, be absorbed in the earth and ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... a long line of sports bums, as a matter of fact. But I broke tradition—went into business for myself finally. Nowadays I'm old and soft. Eh, Belchy?" The two great pals, sitting side by side, dug elbows at each ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... truth that it is only in natural relations that sanity and sanctity can be found, for, as Nietzsche said, the "return" to Nature should rather be called the "ascent." Only so can we achieve the final elimination from our hearts of that clinging tradition that there is any impurity or dishonor in acts of love for which the reasonable, and not merely the conventional, conditions have been fulfilled. For it is vain to attempt to cleanse our laws, or even our by-laws, until we ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... It is to the association of this power and border sternness with the sweet peace and tender decay of Bolton Priory, that the scene owes its distinctive charm. The feelings excited by both characters are definitely connected by the melancholy tradition of the circumstances to which the Abbey owes its origin; and yet farther darkened by the nearer memory of the death, in the same spot which betrayed the boy of Egremont, of another, as young, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... "Asher, it is Aydelot tradition to be determined and self-willed, and the bitterness against Jerome Thaine and his descendants has never ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... they have more regard for their absent loving friends than for others present; as in the instance of the man who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested him to run him through the breast, that his lover might not blush to see him wounded in the back. It is a tradition likewise, that Iolaus, who assisted Hercules in his labors and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes, that even in his time, lovers plighted their faith at Iolaus' tomb. It is likely, therefore, that this band was called sacred ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... interest and value, for they were if anything even older than those at Hopedale, probably having been abandoned after the battle between Eskimo and Indians, fought on the same island, which has now become a tradition among the people. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss, Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed; Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo, This annual humbling certain numbered days, To dash their pride, and joy, for Man seduced. However, some tradition they dispersed Among the Heathen, of their purchase got, And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide— Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven And ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... in the edge of a growth of great oaks and elms, which threw their arms out over even the lofty gables as though in protection. Tradition had it that the reason the building had never been completed was that the old master would have been obliged to cut down a favorite elm in order to make room for it; and he had declared that since his wife had died and all his children but one had followed her, the house ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... doctor is inspired by a hatred of ill-health, and a divine impatience of any waste of vital forces. Unless a man is led to medicine or surgery through a very exceptional technical aptitude, or because doctoring is a family tradition, or because he regards it unintelligently as a lucrative and gentlemanly profession, his motives in choosing the career of a healer are clearly generous. However actual practice may disillusion and corrupt him, his selection in the first instance is not ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... explanation of the similarities of European folk-tales. For many of the incidents and several of the complete tales Benfey showed Indian parallels, and suggested that the stories had originated in India and had been transferred by oral tradition to the different countries of Europe. This entirely undermined the mythological theories of the Grimms and Max Mueller and considerably reduced the importance of folk tales as throwing light upon the primitive psychology of the Aryan peoples. Benfey's researches were followed up by E. Cosquin ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... of mine, rather a back number, considering he died somewhere about two hundred and fifty years ago—but a restless old gentleman, for he is still said to have a trick of haunting the house, and, according to popular tradition, hoping to be able to point out the hiding-place of a treasure ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... illustrates an observation of Hume. Our historian notices that her executioner was a Frenchman of Calais, who was supposed to have uncommon skill. It is probable that the following incident might have been preserved by tradition in France, from the account of the executioner himself:—Anne Bullen being on the scaffold, would not consent to have her eyes covered with a bandage, saying that she had no fear of death. All that the divine who assisted at her execution could obtain from her was, that she ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... regards its compulsory lessons. Also as regards physical training. At present it is assumed that the schoolmaster has a right to force every child into an attempt to become Porson and Bentley, Leibnitz and Newton, all rolled into one. This is the tradition of the oldest grammar schools. In our times an even more horrible and cynical claim has been made for the right to drive boys through compulsory games in the playing fields until they are too much exhausted physically to do anything but drop off to sleep. ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... St. John's apocalyptic visions, or may have been a survival of the legend of the fiery dragon whose very breath was fire, a legend common during the middle ages and also in ancient Rome. Bacon, in his Natural History, says—"There is an ancient tradition of the salamander that it liveth in the fire, and hath force also to extinguish the fire"; and, according to Pliny, Book X. chap. 67,—"The salamander, made in fashion of a lizard, with spots like to stars, never comes abroad, and sheweth itself only during ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... time F. had finished his sleep and digestion, as he had proposed to do, and learned "Pescator dell' Onda," by repeated trials and lessons, we arrived at the Pierre Incise, at the corner of which the Saone enters Lyons. Tradition says that this spot, which reminded me of St. Vincent's rocks, near Clifton, derives its Latinized name from the great work performed by Agrippa in cutting through the solid rock, and enlarging the channel of the river. The site of the castle of Pierre Incise, formerly a prison, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... kindness. We read that, on one visit after her accession, she took a jewel of great value from her dress and presented it to the daughter of the house, Lady Anne Dudley. One avenue off the Park is still known as Queen Elizabeth's Walk, and tradition says she was fond of pacing up and down there with the master of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... the favour to be crowned as their king at Milan. The Emperor proceeded to that city accordingly, and in like fashion, on the 26th of May, 1805, placed on his own head the old iron crown of the Lombard kings, uttering the words which, according to tradition, they were accustomed to use on such occasions, "God hath given it me. Beware who touches it."—Napoleon henceforth styled himself Emperor of the French and King of Italy, but announced that the two crowns should not be held by the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... a picture, is said to have been of the house of Bourdeille, which had the honour to produce Brautome and Montresor. The combination of indolence and talent, of wit and simplicity, of bluntness and irony, with which he is represented, may have been derived from tradition, but could only have been united into the inimitable whole by the pen of Hamilton. Several of his bons-mots have been preserved; but the spirit evaporates in translation. "Where could I get this nose," said Madame D'Albret, observing a slight tendency ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... she writes, 'is the most difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.' She hated the slang and argot of Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants in the provinces. 'The provinces,' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition of the original tongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect for the language of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... coincidence between Herod's praetorium (A.V. "judgment-hall") of Acts xxiii. 35, and the praetorium (A.V. "palace") of Phil. i. 13. But Lightfoot[4] seems to me right in his decisive rejection of this theory and unshaken adherence to the date from Rome. He remarks that the oldest Church tradition is all for Rome; that the Epistle itself evidently refers to its place of origin as to a place of first-rate importance and extent, in which any advance of the Gospel was a memorable and pregnant event; and that the allusion to "Caesar's household" (though it is not so quite ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... a more familiar refuge of the elfin race, (if tradition is to be trusted,) is the glen of the river, or rather brook, named the Allen, which falls into the Tweed from the northward, about a quarter of a mile above the present bridge. As the streamlet finds its way behind Lord Sommerville's ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... opposed to Toland than the rest, was made a bishop; and by far the greatest majority amongst the Anglican clergy, who attacked him, were all rewarded by honors and preferment. The author was accused of making himself a new Heresiarch; that there was a tradition amongst the Irish that he was to be a second Cromwell, and that Toland himself boasted that before he was forty years old, he would be governor over a greater country than Cromwell; and that he would be the head over a new religion ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... however, which were always evaded. Now, as the servant was a Cambridge girl, and had a brother a gyp, or bedmaker, at one of the colleges, besides her uncle keeping the tennis court there, I have often thought there must have been some college legend or tradition in Alma Mater, of Mother Grey and her apples. Will any of your learned correspondents, should it happen to fall within their knowledge, take pity on the natural curiosity of the sex, by ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various

... bewitching surroundings are nearly all described in polysyllabic and unpronounceable Welsh names, and are popular among artists and anglers, it flows through Edeirnim Vale, past Corwen. Here a pathway ascends to the eminence known as Glendower's Seat, with which tradition has closely knit the name of the Welsh hero, the close of whose marvellous career marked the termination of Welsh independence. Then the romantic Dee enters the far-famed Valley of Llangollen, where tourists love to roam, and where lived the "Ladies ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... 730, Crossing of Three Ways.]—Cross roads always had dark associations. This particular spot was well known to tradition and is still pointed out. "A bare isolated hillock of grey stone stands at the point where our road from Daulia meets the road to Delphi and a third road that stretches to the south.... The road runs up a frowning pass between Parnassus on the ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... perpendicularly from its outer edge to the beach below; and the insulated shelf, in its green unapproachable solitude, had evidently caught his eye. It was the scene, I said—taking the direction of his eye as the antecedent for the it,—it was the scene, says tradition, of a sad tragedy during the times of the persecution of Charles. A renegade chaplain, rather weak than wicked, threw himself, in a state of wild despair, over the precipice above; and his body, intercepted in its fall by that shelf, lay unburied among the bushes for years after, until ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... survey of the Italian pastoral drama. In spite of the space it has been necessary to devote to the subject, it must be borne in mind that we have treated it from one point of view only. Besides the interest which it possesses in connexion with the development of pastoral tradition, it also plays a very important part in the history of dramatic art, not in Italy alone, but over the whole of Europe. On this aspect of the subject we have hardly so much as touched. Nor is this all. If it is true, as is commonly assumed, that the opera had its birth in the Orfeo of Angelo ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Temptation of JESUS by Satan, and accounts of demoniacal possessions." (pp. 200-201.) "Some may consider the descent of all Mankind from Adam and Eve as an undoubted historical fact; others may rather perceive in that relation a form of narrative into which in early ages tradition would easily throw itself spontaneously.... Among a particular people, this historical representation became the concrete expression of a great moral truth,—of the brotherhood of all human beings.... The force, grandeur, and ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... not only a devout Christian and a respected member of the community, he was also a fine linguist. He was so well informed on many subjects that, while he was by birth and tradition a Conservative, giving absolute loyalty to the mother country, and desirous of obeying her slightest dictate, yet he was so much more broad-minded than many of his party that he welcomed in his home even those ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... would apply to females as well as males; they shall both go through the same exercises. I assert without fear of contradiction that gymnastic and horsemanship are as suitable to women as to men. Of the truth of this I am persuaded from ancient tradition, and at the present day there are said to be countless myriads of women in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, called Sauromatides, who not only ride on horseback like men, but have enjoined upon them the use of bows and other weapons equally with the men. ...
— Laws • Plato

... need not be discussed here. The marriage of a brother and sister would excite a feeling of loathing among us that seems implanted by nature, but which, further inquiry will show, has mainly arisen from tradition and custom. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... churches have prayer meeting during the week on one of the following nights: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday. Just why Friday night is boycotted one is unable to say. The "luck" psychology may not have had any part in establishing the tradition along that line. Here again we find the law of the "Medes and Persians" working effectively in securing corporeal attendance. The students are required to be there and are there in a body at least. The times for convening these prayer meetings are chiefly two. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... his dialogues, "Critias," of which we have only the beginning, Socrates wishes that he could see how such a commonwealth would work, if it were set moving. Critias undertakes to tell him. For he has received tradition of events that happened more than nine thousand years ago, when the Athenians themselves were such ideal citizens. Critias has received this tradition, he says, from a ninety-year-old grandfather, whose father, Dropides, was ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... that their knowledge of it comes to is clap-trap, pure and simple. They brag of its resources, and tell you the carpenter can do anything you want nowadays, but if you attempt anything outside of their tradition they are frightened. They think that their exits and their entrances are great matters, and that they must come on with such a speech, and go off with such another; but it is not of the least consequence how ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... known as the DeBeers group. His great rival was Barney Barnato, who gave African finance the same erratic and picturesque tradition that the Pittsburgh millionaires brought to American finance. His real name was Barnett Isaacs. After kicking about the streets of the East End of London he became a music hall performer under the name by which he is known to business history. The diamond rush lured him to ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... or south aisle is the chapel of Mary, with a Crucifixion by Van Dyck. In the sacristy is preserved a vase once famous under the name of the Sacro Catino (sacred vessel). It was found at Csarea, in Palestine, and tradition asserted that it had been presented by the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, and that out of it the Saviour had eaten the paschal lamb with his disciples. It was believed to be of emerald; and a law was passed in 1476, declaring that if any one applied a hard substance to the vase he should ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... God's Word," said the Vaudois Prior. "Alas! for the men that have made it void through their tradition! 'If they speak not according thereunto, it is because there ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... remains a problem not to be satisfactorily solved; and I doubt whether the Gitanos themselves, have any secret tradition that might lead to a discovery of what they really were in the beginning, or from what country they came. The received opinion sets them down as Egyptians, and makes them out to be the descendants of those vagabond votaries of Isis, who appear to have exercised, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... comes will go in multitudes, and the Lost Tribes representatively. "I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion" (Jer. iii. 14). In a few years men will understand why, in this country, as well as in England, people are hunting up their genealogy, and by tradition, history, and heraldry, trying to ascertain of what family they are. The re-settlement of Palestine by God's chosen people, the Lost Tribes, no one can deny who reads and believes the Bible. Hanging upon the fulfilment of this great fact are many ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... where he spent most of his time, his eyes rested upon the battle-scenes of Matejks, the Polish artist, and the landscapes of Munkacsy, that painter of his own country, who took his name from the town of Munkacs, where tradition says that the Magyars settled when they came from the Orient, ages ago. Then a bitter longing took possession of him to breathe a different air, to fly from Paris, and place a wide distance between himself and Marsa; to take a trip around the world, where new scenes might soften his grief, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... city of Siam has a story of its founding, woven for it from tradition or fable; and each of these legends is distinguished from the others by peculiar features. The religion, customs, arts, and literature of a people naturally impart to their annals a spirit all their ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... self-realisation. Meditation is one of the six ways through which Buddhahood may be reached, and the Zen sectarians affirm that Sakyamuni laid special stress on this method in his later teachings, handing down the rules to his chief disciple Kashiapa. According to their tradition Kashiapa, the first Zen patriarch, imparted the secret to Ananda, who in turn passed it on to successive patriarchs until it reached Bodhi-Dharma, the twenty-eighth. Bodhi-Dharma came to Northern ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... Tory writers say that this was done by the Whigs; because, finding the name Grahame wrought in the young gentleman's neckcloth, they took the corpse for that of Claver'se himself. The Whig authorities give a different account, from tradition, of the cause of Cornet Grahame's body being thus mangled. He had, say they, refused his own dog any food on the morning of the battle, affirming, with an oath, that he should have no breakfast but ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... retiring from the board annually so that there shall not be, at any time, an entirely new board. This would insure continuity. Another plan for a county board would be to have the presidents of the district boards act as a county board of education. Such a board should be authorized—and indeed this tradition should be established—to select a county superintendent from applicants from outside as well as inside the county. They should be empowered to go anywhere in the country for a superintendent with a reputation in the teaching profession. ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... in an abrupt hollow, and was entirely lost to view in a mammoth growth of pinewoods. Years ago a settlement had existed in this region, but what the nature of that settlement it was now impossible to tell. Local tradition held that, at some far-distant period, the place had been occupied by a camp of half-breed "bad-men" who worked their evil trade upon the south side of the American border, and sought security in the shelter of this perfect hiding-place. Be that as it may, it was ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... as the old heroes, because they have not been magnified by time; but, if compared with men of the past, many of them are as great, if not, in some cases, greater. The countries of America are at present forming this tradition about their illustrious ancestors. And, if they want to live the strong life of the nations destined to last and to be powerful and respected, they must persevere in the work of building up around their fathers the frame-work of their national consciousness. Washington every day appears ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... any thing I have yet met with on that subject. He says, 'Certain it is, that these poems are in every body's mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son, and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition.'" Works ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... the Danish tradition, there is a female Elf in the elder tree, which she leaves every midnight; and, having strolled among the fields, ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... however, in all probability never know whether this hermit, whose actual existence at the time is attested by every tradition regarding the origin of Vijayanagar, was really the great Madhava or another less celebrated sage, on whom by a confusion of ideas his name has been foisted. Some say that Madhavacharya lived ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... instruction given in their churches has been modified. More Bible is taught, and less tradition. The preaching is more of Christ, and less of the saints. The adoration of pictures has greatly lessened. All sects have been compelled to introduce schools, and to educate both boys and girls, to educate their priests, and to remove ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... The tradition is that the Black Colonel used his dirk for spur on that ride, but I, who was a witness, know better. He did not need to use it, and would not have done so in any event, loving Mack as he did. His soft Gaelic whisper of bidding was his only spur, and up, up, slowly, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... imaginable; and I amuse myself with contrasting her beautiful and innocent face of fifteen with the skulls with which he has peopled several cells, and particularly with that of one skull dated 1766, which was once covered (the tradition goes) by the most lovely features of Bologna—noble and rich. When I look at these, and at this girl—when I think of what they were, and what she must be—why, then, my dear Murray, I won't shock you by saying what ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... character and the mutual relations of the European settlers. Portuguese mariners, after more than half a century of painful groping downward along the West African coast in search of a sea route to India that vague tradition asserted could there be found, in 1486 rounded the Cape of Good Hope, which then received the despondent name of {p.003} the Cape of Storms from ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... experienced from Juno is alluded to in the story. The tradition was that the future mother of Apollo and Diana, flying from the wrath of Juno, besought all the islands of the Aegean to afford her a place of rest, but all feared too much the potent queen of heaven to assist her rival. Delos alone consented to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... until ill-health compelled him to resign, in 1857. Two years later Rev. William J. Potter, who is not only the typical preacher but the typical practitioner of his preaching, was installed, and yet holds the pastorate. The bell of this church, tradition says, was formerly in a Spanish convent. Whether this be so or not, its clear, musical tone gives evidence that it ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... applause meant anything, it surely stood for a determination on the part of her listeners to maintain the York Hill tradition. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... Jehudah Hanassi (the Prince), and the added work was called the Mishnah or Second Law. Mark the date. We have passed the period of the fall of Judea's nationality. And it was these very academies in which the Jewish tradition—the Jewish Law was studied, that kept alive the Jewish people as a religious community after they had ceased to be a nation. This Mishnah, divided into six sedarim or chapters, and subdivided into thirty-six treatises, became ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... painfully true. To the majority of people now living, his outline and figure are dim and vague. There are to-day professors and presidents of colleges, legislators of prominence, lawyers and judges, literary men, and successful business men, to whom Lincoln is a tradition. It cannot be expected that a person born after the year (say) 1855, could remember Lincoln more than as a name. Such an one's ideas are made up not from his remembrance and appreciation of events as ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... thin, aristocratic boy—spoke solemnly. He was a dandy, the understudy—as John soon discovered—of one of the "Bloods"; a "Junior Blood," or "Would-be," a tremendous authority on "swagger," a stickler for tradition, who had been nearly ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... parental standard, and not only made wild dashes at originality and independent action, but at the same time cherished a perfect mania for regulating and running all the others. Independence was a sacred tradition in the Talbert family; but interference was a fixed nervous habit, and complication was a chronic social state. The blessed mother understood them all, because she loved them all. Cyrus loved them all, but the only one he thought he understood was Peggy, and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... It is a local tradition at Aire-sur-la-Lys that, about half a century ago, the good people of this ancient and picturesque town (which, like St.-Omer, remained a part of the Spanish dominions when all the rest of the Artois became ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... payment stipulations, by unjustifiable deductions, etc., while, on the other hand, the cartels are often too ruthless in their action. In this field we have very much to learn from the English business man. Long commercial tradition and international business experience have taught him long ago that broad-mindedness is the best business principle. Look at the English form of contract, the methods of insurance companies, the settlement of business ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... her society and counsel solely for political reasons; he was also fond of conversing with her on literature, and at times they composed amatory verses together. According to an oft-repeated tradition, one day at the Chateau of Chambord, whilst Margaret was boasting to her brother of the superiority of womankind in matters of love, the King took a diamond ring from his finger and wrote on one of the window panes ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... considering what they were and the work which they were sent to do, present us all through that age with such a picture of gallantry, disinterestedness, and high heroic energy, as has never been overmatched; the more remarkable, as it was the fruit of no drill or discipline, no tradition, no system, no organised training, but was the free native growth of a ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... is inhabited by Bhils, Mairs, and Chinns, all very much alike." The breed is small-boned, dark, and silent, and the stupidest of them are good shots. John Chinn the Second was rather clever, but as the eldest son he entered the army, according to Chinn tradition. His duty was to abide in his father's regiment for the term of his natural life, though the corps was one which most men would have paid heavily to avoid. They were irregulars, small, dark, and blackish, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... 'An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously insulted some distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, seized the young man, and horribly mutilated him. For several years the legate kept HIS revenge within his own breast, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... when the buried treasures of the soil filled the air with smoke, the valley where Liege lies was a lovely spot.[2] Tradition tells how, in the sixth century, Monulphe, Bishop of Tongres, as he made a progress through his diocese was attracted by the beauties of the site where a few hovels then clustered near the Meuse. After ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... said she, "and there is a tradition that the Roman General Agricola, when he invaded these parts, pitched his camp on that moel. The hill is spoken of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... Wandering Jew," the legends of whom have formed the foundation of numerous romances, poems and tragedies. One version is that this person was a servant in the house of Pilate, and gave the Master a blow as He was being dragged out of the palace to go to His death. A popular tradition makes the wanderer a member of the tribe of Naphtali, who, some seven or eight years previous to the birth of the Christ-child left his father to go with the wise men of the East whom the star led to the lowly cot in Bethlehem. It runs, also, that the cause of the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... what you want to do is to dig for Captain Kidd's buried treasure. You have all heard that old Captain Kidd buried a lot of treasure somewhere, but I doubt if you were aware that he buried it in Crosstrees Camp. However, there is a tradition to that effect and so I would like you to do your best to find it. Tradition says that the treasure was buried somewhere near the spot where we are now. It is hidden, I believe, not farther than fifty feet away in any direction from this open tent, ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... to know how high this strange legend can be traced. The other tradition that St. Paul was subject to epileptic fits, has a less legendary character. The phrase 'thorn in the flesh' is scarcely reconcilable with Luther's hypothesis, otherwise than as doubts of the objectivity of his vision, and of his after revelations may have been consequences of the disease, whatever ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's work on the Green Review. Stephen had left it to him when he went out. Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the Review and its place was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... Somerset felt that it required a profounder mind than his to disinter from the lumber of conventionality the lineaments that really sat in the painter's presence, and to discover their history behind the curtain of mere tradition. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... female element. They are very subtle, the women there, with highly strung nerves always in search for new pleasures, fresh sensations, and truly void of any idealism. They are often as corrupt as the novels they are reading, because their morality finds no support either in religion or tradition. But it is a brilliant world all the same. The hours of practice with the foils are so long there that they look more like days and nights, and the weapons are dangerous sometimes, as they are not blunted. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... have tails. Sometimes this is the result of art, sometimes of a natural shortcoming. The cats of Yedo are of bad repute as mousers, their energies being relaxed by much petting at the hands of ladies. The Cat of Nabeshima, so says tradition, was a ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... tradition is still related amongst the surrounding peasantry:—The Baron Rudolf, it is said, was enticed to sign over the bodies and souls of his future offspring to the fiend, Heidelberger, on condition that the latter would enable him to gain the person and possessions of the Lady Agatha. The contract, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... not to have been peculiar to Lyme, as Dr. Whitaker describes, in his Account of Townley, (the seat of a collateral line of Legh,) "near the summit of the park, and where it declines to the south, the remains of a large pool, through which tradition reports that the deer were driven by their keepers in the manner still practised in the park ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... of them especially flattering. It used to be, and no doubt is still, considered lucky to start off running directly the cuckoo is heard for the first time in the year, and thirty or forty years ago, if a girl obeyed this tradition, anyone near her would laugh and say: 'Run, run! and don't let no Tiverton man catch you!' The other saying is cryptic: 'He must go to Tiverton and ask Mr Able.' An interpretation suggested is that this was originally said to a questioner who asked for unattainable information, and that 'Mr ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... as it is known that rumours of the existence of the City of the Sun have reached the outer world, and more than one attempt has been made to find it. But we are all pure-blooded Peruvians of the ancient race here, and it is a tradition with us to keep ourselves uncontaminated by any admixture of alien blood, therefore every possible precaution is taken to maintain the most absolute secrecy as to the way by which the Valley of the Sun is entered ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... Indians four days and four nights at the graves of their departed. A small fire is kindled for the purpose near the grave at sunset, where the nearest relatives convene and maintain a continuous lamentation till the morning dawn. There was an ancient tradition that at the expiration of this time the Indian arose, and mounting his spirit pony, galloped off ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... his mother's son that she received him long afterwards at Djoun. To his mother Kinglake was passionately attached; owed to her, as he tells us in "Eothen," his home in the saddle and his love for Homer. A tradition is preserved in the family that on the day of her funeral, at a churchyard five miles away, he was missed from the household group reassembled in the mourning home; he was found to have ordered his horse, and galloped back in ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... the name of Christians. The males bear the name of some or other of the apostles, the most part of the women are called Mary, and yet they have no knowledge of baptism. They adore the cross, and hang it in little about their necks. They chiefly venerate St Thomas; and it is an ancient tradition amongst them, that this holy apostle, in going to the Indies, was cast by a tempest on their coast; that being come ashore, he preached Jesus Christ to those of Socotora; and that from the wreck of that ship which brought him thither, they built a chapel in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... of power and development. To the leading tribe several adjacent peoples allied themselves, and in time the mightiest and most highly-cultured kingdom of South America flourished among them. According to tradition, the ruling royal family took its rise where the icefields of some of the loftiest summits of the Andes are reflected in the mirror of Lake Titicaca. The king was called Inca, and when we speak of the Inca Kingdom we mean old Peru, whose people ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Dillon had to find fault with it because its provisions, to use his own words, included "blackmail to the landlords" and arranged for "a flagitious waste of public funds"—the foundation on which these charges rested being that, following an unvarying tradition, the Unionist Government bribed the landlords into acceptance of the Bill by relieving them of half their payment for Poor Rate, whilst it gave a corresponding relief of half the County Dues to the tenants. He also ventured the prediction, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... be for a brief space our home; a real, wild, weird, romantic home, seated on its rocky island away from the world, away from every sign of life save pigeons or bats; full of grim spirits—if tradition were to be believed—and nightly walked by strange women and blood-stained men—for stories there are in plenty concerning the great Castle of Olavin Linna as the Finns call it, at Savonlinna, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... come back, and men and women who were outwardly crude and illiterate but at core kind and chivalrous, and nearly always humorously unconventional. The bunch grass, so beloved by the patriarchal pioneers, has been ploughed up and destroyed; the unwritten law of Judge Lynch will soon become an oral tradition; but the Land of Yesterday blooms afresh as the Golden ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... glances were as indecipherable as the mystery of their abortive and useless existences. Without comprehending, they looked at the merrymakers' line pass by. It went on beyond Pors-Even and the Gaoses' home. They meant to follow the ancient bridal tradition of Ploubazlanec and go to the chapel of La Trinite, which is situated at the very end ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... of experience; they cannot be intimidated; they cannot be deceived for an indefinite number of years; if the established order seems to them unfair, unjust or illiberal, they have little respect for tradition ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... of hunting the wren in the Isle of Man; the same custom obtains in the south of Ireland, only it takes place on St. Stephen's day. There is a tradition which is supposed to account for this animosity against this pretty and harmless little bird. In one of the many Irish rebellions a night march was made by a body of rebels on a party of royalists, and when, about dawn of day, they neared the ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... direction. But, in sum, and thanks to this being a fixed point, he will maintain himself erect even under an absolute monarchy, under a Philip II. in Spain, under a Louis XIV. in France, under a Frederick II. in Prussia. From the feudal baron or gentleman of the court to the modern gentleman, this tradition persists and descends from story to story down to lowest social substratum: to-day, every man of spirit, the bourgeois, the peasant, the workman, has his point of honor like the noble. He likewise, in spite of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... is on his way across the fields to a turret where he is to meet the girl he loves. As he walks through the solitary pastures he mentally recreates the powerful life and varied interests of the city which, tradition has it, once occupied this site, and he seems to be absorbed in a melancholy recognition of the evanescence of human glory. The girl is not mentioned till stanza 5. Does the emphasis on the scenery and its historic associations ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition—but Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... after the thirteen harmless years of Yung Cheng, by the equally long and equally glorious reign of Ch'ien Lung. The Chinese people, who, strictly speaking, govern themselves in the most democratic of all republics, have not the slightest objection to the Imperial tradition, which has indeed been their continuous heritage from remotest antiquity, provided that public liberties are duly safeguarded, chiefly in the sense that there shall always be equal opportunities for all. They are quick to discover the character ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... all rights which your slaves acquire by tradition, stipulation, or any other title, are acquired for you, even though the acquisition be without your knowledge, or even against your will; for a slave, who is in the power of another person, can have nothing of his own. Consequently, if he is instituted heir, he must, in order to be able ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... that when that form (the sign of the cross) should be victorious, the old religion should disappear. The same sign is also said to have been {549} discovered on the destruction of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, and the same tradition to have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... invaluable for topography and ethnology of this period and region. It was from Korelin, one of the four refugees, that the Russian archivists took the first account of the massacre; and Coxe's narrative is based on Korelin's story, though the tradition of the massacre has been handed down from father to child among Oonalaskans to this day, so that certain caves near Captain Harbor, and Makushin Volcano are still pointed out as the refuge of the four ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... of culture that Indo-European race of which we come, the stirps generosa et historica of the world, as Coleridge has called it, had attained, while it was dwelling still as one family in its common home. No voices of history, the very faintest voices of tradition, reach us from ages so far removed from our own. But in the silence of all other voices there is one voice which makes itself heard, and which can tell us much. Where Indian, and Greek, and Latin, and ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... that "the boroughs (towns) of England, during the period of oppression, after the Norman invasion, led the way in the silent growth and elevation of the English people; that, unnoticed and despised by prelate and noble, they had alone preserved the full tradition of Teutonic liberty; that, by their traders and shopkeepers, the rights of self-government, of free speech in free meeting, of equal justice by one's equals, were brought safely across the ages of Norman tyranny."[A] The rights of self-government and free speech ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... him more akin to the Liberals, who succeeded him, than to the old Whig party. Lord John, as different from Fox in temperament as a man could be, was the inheritor of the spirit which leavened the old Whig tradition. In Lord John the sentiments of Fox took on a more deliberate air. He was a more intellectual man than his lavish, emotional, imposing forbear; and if it is remembered that he had, in addition, the diffidence of a sensitive man, these facts go far to explain an ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... books; the sober breakfast-room in which luncheon was served; the orderly servants; the plants; the gold fishes; the heavy hangings; a tiger skin with a life-expressive head; the portraits of American statesmen; the rich painting of a cow that flashed back the tradition of a trade-mark ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... tradition mentioned concerning the origin of the name, more interesting and even more probable. It appears that the ground now occupied by this street is the site of the Palace of Axayacatl, the father of Montezuma, last Emperor of Mexico. In this spacious and magnificent palace the Spaniards were received ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... saw in the possibilities of the standard illustrated magazine has been excellently carried out by Mr. Ellery Sedgwick in The Atlantic Monthly; every tradition has been respected, and yet the new progressive note introduced has given it a position and a circulation never before attained by a non-illustrated magazine of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... the glass door marked "office" slowly. The door was closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been "sent to the office," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad enough to need an interview with the principal was always expelled. Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly—no one in the Willis family had even been expelled from school, ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... perfectly proper words, within the tradition and suitable to his character of a police officer addressing one of his special flock. But the reception they got departed from tradition and propriety. It was outrageous. The stunted, weakly figure ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... magnificent prospects are obtained a little farther afield—our drives and walks abounded in interest—and associations! Strange but true it is that we can hardly halt anywhere in France without coming upon historic, literary or artistic memorials. Every town and village is redolent of tradition, hardly a spot but ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... excuse. On Saturday, at six o'clock. I shall be expecting you, and if you fail to come, I shall think—for how do I know to the contrary?—that this house, which his remained uninhabited for twenty years, must have some gloomy tradition or dreadful ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... economy is a mixture of foreign and domestic entrepreneurship, government regulation and welfare measures, and village tradition. It is almost totally supported by exports of crude oil and natural gas, with revenues from the petroleum sector accounting for more than 50% of GDP. Per capita GDP of $8,800 is among the highest in the Third World, and substantial income from overseas investment supplements domestic production. ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... prior to it there existed a collection of sayings by Jesus, called the Logia. This collection of sayings seems to have been originally written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Now Matthew Arnold tells us that the Gospel narratives passed through at least fifty years of oral tradition before they became fixed in the form in which we now have them. Of course it is quite possible that the story of the virgin birth arose during those fifty years, for we can imagine how the life of Jesus was then discussed! Matthew and Luke alone speak of the virgin birth. Mark's Gospel we believe ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... they became very bitter toward the Catholic bishops. We are not at all astonished, therefore, that one of the victims of this new persecution, St. Hilary, of Poitiers, expressly repudiated and condemned this regime of violence. He also proclaimed, in the name of ecclesiastical tradition, the principle of religious toleration. He deplored the fact that men in his day believed that they could defend the rights of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ by worldly intrigue. He writes: "I ask you Bishops ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... with—Guido's Beatrice Cenci. A great divergence of opinion, as is well known, exists in regard to the portrait. It bears the pillar and crown of the Colonnas, to which family it probably belonged. According to the family tradition, it was taken on the night before her execution. Other accounts state that it was painted by Guido from memory after he had seen her on the scaffold. Judging from the position in which the poor girl's head is represented, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various



Words linked to "Tradition" :   traditional, wont, practice, habit, mental object, cognitive content, institution, content, hadith, custom



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