Tradition (n.) satisfies the dull mind with existing symbols; only the passionate yearning of a highly developed mind, for which the old symbol no longer unites high and low, can create a new one.
Tradition (n.) works by inverse proportion: the more beautiful and sublime the image it hands down, the further it lies from anyone's actual experience.
Tradition (n.) hides our pre-existent thinking: it goes on in us unnoticed so long as traditional symbols support us — so long as the father or the king is not dead.
Tradition (n.) only preserved, never built on, stagnates toward a lethal end.
Tradition (n.) would arrive at complete petrifaction without the shocks of revolutionary spirit, and lose its effect.
Tradition (n.) faced with the dreamer's illumination is like a hen that has hatched ducklings, driven to despair by the aquatic proclivities of its young.
Tradition (n.) broken is always a danger to the soul: the instincts, which express themselves through old customs, sink back into the unconscious and swell it, until a rootless consciousness is flooded — in hybris or an inferiority complex.
Tradition (n.) is what any lasting renewal must be rooted in; a dominant grown from historical roots acts like a living being in a man, so that he does not possess it but it possesses him.