The Custom House Quotes & Sayings

Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache; but a man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to bed, I think he would change places with his officer; for look you, sir, you know not which way you shall go. — William Shakespeare

The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. — Kakuzo Okakura

Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We followed him through the wealthy splendor of the house. Hardwood floors. Custom carved woodworking. Statues. Fountains. Suits of armor. Original painting, one of them a van Gogh. Stained-glass windows. Household staff in formal uniform. I kept expecting to come across a flock of peacocks roaming the halls, or maybe a pet cheetah in a diamond-studded collar. — Jim Butcher

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. — Sarah Vowell

French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast — Joseph Conrad

Another big step was building a house here in Stillwater. Avery's ancestry had claimed some prime property looking down along the St. Croix River. He chose to custom build their home, working endlessly with architects and builders, trying to make a perfect home for his Kane to live in. Kane insisted Avery spent too much money, and every time he gave input, it was designed to save them money. Avery nixed most of those ideas, stating very clearly this was their dream home, the perfect place for his prince to live his life in style. — Kindle Alexander

In his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. — Herman Melville

I never had a job. I bought my first house within a year of getting out of school, and I built a custom one four and a half years later. The Art Center didn't teach much about business, but I learned a lot from the Fortune 500 companies that were my clients. — Richard MacDonald

The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it. — J.M. Barrie

I allowed my head to rule my heart. I discovered both were wrong. My head said keep calm and a plan will arise, then you can act. My heart said act now, forget about thinking."
"The truth is, acting is the only way to develop a plan. And my heart knows it. Sometimes the only way to find if a thing will succeed is to experiment. — Jeffrey Perren

On coming to the house, they (the Magi), saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. (Matthew 2:11) [This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them. — Martin Luther

Knowledge is useless until it's coupled with action. — Susan Cain

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business-room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will, and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that — Robert Louis Stevenson

A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Jon Stone spoke thirteen languages and was fluent in six, French being one. He spoke it so well the girls thought he was a native Parisian pretending to be an American. This ability to blend with the natives was a valuable tool when Jon plied his trade. Jon eased from the bed. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors lined the back of his house, ten-foot-tall, custom-designed monsters so Jon could Zen on the view. Golden lights glittered to the horizon, ruby flashes marked ghetto-bird prowlers, jets descending toward LAX were strung like pearls across a tuxedo black sky. The doors were heavy as trucks, but silent as silk when they slid open. Jon stepped out and went to the pool. Pike was a silhouette cutout, backlit by the city as Jon swaggered close. "What — Robert Crais

A custom existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning. In every house then a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called "the stranger's room." Not because these people thought they could trace something of someone they loved in the stranger who used it, not because the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because - plain and simple and stupendous fact - he or she was Christ. — Dorothy Day

The practice in Washington among the representa- tives of the great grafters is never to make a fight against a bill in both houses. The wisdom of this policy is plain. One house is thereby always permitted to appear to be the friend of the people, while the killing of a measure in one house is all that is necessary. Every Washington newspaper correspondent knows this. Any one may confirm the statement by watching the course of legislation for a few years. In the past, it has been the custom to introduce these fake bills in the house, pass them to appease public clamor, and impose upon the senate the duty of killing them. Perhaps the senators, now that they are elected by the people, will demand the right to pass a few fake bills themselves and let the representatives bear the odium of killing them. — Anonymous

I tire of this constant longing that follows me as night follows day, unceasing. — Ava Zavora

It is almost nicer being a godfather than a father, like having white mice but making your nanny feed them for you. — Theodore White

'The Waking Dark' is about what happens when something awakens a town's darkest impulses and unleashes them on the world. — Robin Wasserman

And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity. — Herman Melville

His in-house intercom greeted him with a cheery 'Welcome home, Bart,' and his server droid - custom-made to replicate Princess Leia, classic 'Star Wars,' slave-girl mode (he was a nerd, but he was still a guy) - strolled out to offer him his favorite orange fizzy with crushed ice. — J.D. Robb

And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly.
But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons. — D.H. Lawrence

Something very hot and very explodey had happened, and I wasn't sure what. Or how. — Andy Weir

I'm finishing building a house and setting up a shop to build custom electronical musical instruments. — Robert Moog

I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy friends. — Charles Dickens

The 5,500-squarefoot house was custom built with a Mediterranean decor. It was the exact opposite of the dingy hotel rooms he stayed in when he was on the road. This house was very open with high ceilings, so even giant-like friends like Kevin Nash could hang out with no issue...
Shawn conducted a class as I photographed away. Students Lance Cade, Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan), Brian Kendrick, Paul London and others did calisthenics and other exercises. After an hour or so they got into the ring to do some falls and learn a few holds....
Here I was face-to-face with Shawn Michaels, and he asked me, "What do you want to do?" My mouth spewed words faster than I could think, as I whispered so the students wouldn't hear, "Shoot me into the ropes. When I come back on the rebound I will give you a flying dropkick and then put you in the figure-four leglock for the win. — Bill Apter

I love the feeling of touching the rock, the feeling of my body going up the rock. — Alex Honnold

It is the custom to sneer at the modern apartment-house, television, big-city Christmas, with its commercial taint ... office parties, artificial ... Christmas trees ... but future generations in search of their lost Christmases may well remember its innocence; yes, and its beauty, too. — Paul Gallico

There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House. — Herman Melville

Bad roads and indifferent inns, ... the continual converse one is obliged to have with the vilest part of mankind - innkeepers, post-masters, and custom house officers. — Edward Gibbon

ITS NOT FUNNY!"
"You're right," agreed Sydney. "It's no funny. It's hilarious."
We were back at Raymond's house, in the privacy of our room. It had taken forever for us to get away form the fireside festivities, particularly after learning a terrible fact about a Keeper custom. Well, I thought it was terrible, at least. It truned out that if someone wanted to marry domeone else around here, the prospectimve bride and groom each had to battle it out with the other's nearest relative of the same sex. Angeline had spotted Joshua's interest from the moment I'd arrived, and when she'd seen the bracelet, she'd assumed some sort of arragement has been made. — Richelle Mead

Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard. — Tony Kushner

WHY DO YOU THINK LEAN EFFORTS FAIL---PROVIDED THOSE HAVE NO ENSURED HI-FI SOPHISTICATION TAG ACCORDING TO MODERN CENTURY GLOBAL WALK SPIRIT IN EVERY ANGLE OF FOR-THOUGHT TO KEEP EAGLE EYE ENSURENCE IN TO CHALLENGING FUTURE. — Various

So it is the custom that a free woman leave her mother's house to bind herself and those of her blood to a neighboring clan, either by the sword or by the cradle. — Catherine M. Wilson