Rite Quotes

• Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.

  Dan Millman

  Change, Courage, Energy

  Dan Millman (1992). “No Ordinary Moments: A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life”, p.81, H J Kramer

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• The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

  Pete Townshend

  Writing, Rocks, Rock And Roll

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• KISS, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss." It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding; but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Kissing, Understanding, Lexicographer

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.120, 谷月社

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• My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

  Winston Churchill

  Drinking, Beer, Funny Sarcastic

  Uttered during a lunch with the Arab leader, Ibn Saud

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• As artists and traders in medieval cities began to form organizations, they instituted tough initiation ceremonies. Journeymen in Bergen, Norway, were shoved down a chimney, thrown three times into the sea, and soundly whipped. Such rites made belonging to the guild or corporation more precious to those who were accepted, and survived.

  Isaac Asimov

  Artist, Sea, Cities

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• It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward.

  Joseph Campbell

  Spirit, Prime, Function

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.7, New World Library

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• The Roman Pontiffs have always...held that all those rites should be preserved which deviate neither from accuracy in matters of faith, nor from what is fitting.

  Pope Pius IX

  Matter, Fitting, Should

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• Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.

  Confucius

  Punishment, People, Reform

  Confucius (1992). “Confucius: The Analects”

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• The real important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine message in such a way that you are capable of experiencing it. What the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to each other might be, in technical terms, is not half important as you, the celebrant, feeling the Virgin Birth within you, the birth of the mystic, mythic being that is your own spiritual life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Spiritual, Father, Real

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• Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Book, Hundred, Ceremony

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• But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others - even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

  Jim Butcher

  Hero, Sacrifice, Perfect

  Jim Butcher (2010). “Changes: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.167, Penguin

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• Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
  Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
  The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
  The costly aversion of the eyes from death-
  Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.

  Philip Larkin

  Running, Eye, Solitude

  Philip Larkin (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.43, Faber & Faber

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• Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Religious, Funeral, Kind

  "Science Fiction Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dead at Age 90", www.foxnews.com. March 19, 2008.

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• I remember coming back from training one day and Simon Poidevin was talking to a priest. I thought...this was going to be some rough encounter because there's Poido getting the last rites before the test's even started

  Phil Kearns

  Talking, Training, One Day

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• Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.

  John Stott

  Christian, Water, Baptism

  John Stott (2013). “Baptism and Fullness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today”, p.57, InterVarsity Press

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• No jot, iota, or tittle of the temple rites is otherwise than uplifting and sanctifying. In every detail the endowment ceremony contributes to covenants of morality of life, consecration of person to high ideals, devotion to truth, patriotism to nation, and allegiance to God.

  James E. Talmage

  Uplifting, Details, Covenant

  James E. Talmage (2015). “The House of the Lord”, p.102, Latter-day Strengths

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• They say funerals are not for the dead but for the living. Those rites are what permit you to move on, so if you don't deal with the remains, you can never deal with the memories. That might be true; we may have walked in their dust down on Venice Minor, but it's not the same as a proper good-bye.

  Ann Aguirre

  Memories, Moving, Dust

  Ann Aguirre (2011). “Aftermath”, p.41, Penguin

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• Life is a terrible conflict, a grandiose and atrocious confluence. Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, and in the laws of Nature.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Religious, Men, Hunting

  Jose Ortega y Gasset (2007). “Meditations on Hunting”, p.106, Wilderness Adventures Press

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• Even while Jerusalem was standing and the Jews were at peace with us, the practice of their sacred rites was at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Practice, Names, Jerusalem

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• The rite of passage of learning to build a fire that will burn all night with one match is not an insignificant one in my husband’s family, and I grew up camping and backpacking. I love to camp.

  Sarah Wayne Callies

  Love, Husband, Night

  "Q&A – Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes)". Interview with Brian Fegter, www.amc.com.

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• Dance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Art, Dancing

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• LOVE is essentially self-communicative: those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.... No amount of rites, rituals, ceremonies, worship, meditation, penance and remembrance can produce love in themselves. None of these is necessarily a sign of love. On the contrary, those who sigh loudly and weep and wail have yet to experience love. Love sets on fire the one who finds it. At the same time it seals his lips so that no smoke comes out

  Meher Baba

  Love, Fire, Self

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• For too long, our society has shrugged off bullying by labeling it a 'rite of passage' and by asking students to simply 'get over it.' Those attitudes need to change. Every day, students are bullied into silence and are afraid to speak up. Let's break this silence and end school bullying.

  Linda Sanchez

  Bullying, Attitude, School

  "LGBT Youth Need Our Voices to Stand Up to Bullying" by Rep. Linda Sanchez, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 11, 2014.

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• It is only in times of social dissolution, as in the last age of the small Semitic states, when men and their gods were alike powerless before the advance of the Assyrians, that magical superstitions based on mere terror, or rites designed to conciliate alien gods, invade the sphere of tribal or national religion. In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

  William Robertson Smith

  Men, Age, May

  William Robertson Smith (1889). “Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions”

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• We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too.

  Hamza Yusuf

  Religious, Islamic, Dhikr

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