Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already sovered with scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulant as humanity.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are living.

White founts falling in the courts of the sun, / And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book, and a tired man who wants a book to read.