Ritual Quotes - Page 27

• Zen was a reaction. Just as Buddha came into the world and spoke against the fall of Vedanta, so Buddhism lost its essence and became ritual. Zen was a reaction to that.

  Frederick Lenz

  Fall, Buddhism, Essence

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• My parents found tradition and ritual very important, because they were both brought up that way and found comfort in it. They thought it was important for children to be kept on a schedule. You went home for the holidays, you went to mass on Sunday - no ifs, ands, or buts. That was ingrained in me from a very young age, and I think that's informed who I am in so many aspects of my life. I crave stability and a schedule and the security that comes along with it.

  Chloe Sevigny

  Children, Holiday, Home

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men . . . who don't know how to be a man with a woman, only abrute or a boy, who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders and rain-forest burners and war starters who want more in hopes that will make them feel better; . . . are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their puberty rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and say "Attaboy," to treat them as good enough to be considered a man.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, War, Rain

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• We become male automatically because of the Y chromosome and the little magic peanut, but if we are to become men we need the helpof other men--we need our fathers to model for us and then to anoint us, we need our buddies to share the coming-of-age rituals with us and to let us join the team of men, and we need myths of heroes to inspire us and to show us the way.

  Frank Pittman

  Father, Team, Hero

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• Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.

  Northrop Frye

  Fall, Together, Special

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.412, University of Toronto Press

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• Ancient worship . . . does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people today are now adding ancient elements to their worship. . . . This recovery of ancient practices is not the mere restoration of ritual but a deep, profound, and passionate engagement with truth—truth that forms and shapes the spiritual life into a Christlikeness that issues forth in the call to a godly and holy life and into a deep commitment to justice and to the needs of the poor.

  Robert E. Webber

  Spiritual, Recovery, Commitment

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• The Miss America contest isthe most perfectly rendered theater in our culture, for it so perfectly captures what we yearn for: a low-class ritual, a polished restatement of vulgarity, that wants to open the door to high-class respectability by way of plain middle-class anxiety and ambition.

  Gerald Early

  Ambition, Class, America

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• I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and traditional mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social ethics,--if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer, men and women,--if it does not add to the world's stock of valuable souls,--if it does not give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great factory of men--I will have none of it.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Religious, Men, Giving

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.187, Rowman & Littlefield

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• We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Mind, Illusion, Finding Peace

  Benjamin N. Cardozo (1924). “The Growth of the Law”, p.66, Yale University Press

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• Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Reflection, People, Serious

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• Human paint, produce films and videos; they dance, dream and make music; they engage in political action, exchange goods, perform rituals, build houses start wars, act in plays, try to please patrons- and so on... They contain patterns, press the practitioners to "conform" and in this way mold their thought, their perception, their actions, and their discriminative abilities.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Dream, War, Play

  Paul Feyerabend (2001). “Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being”, p.28, University of Chicago Press

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• I knew that I would speak in the language of the vanquished No more durable than old customs, family rituals, Christmas tinsel, and once a year the hilarity of carols.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Years, Hilarity, Language

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• Order, cleanliness, seemliness make a structure that is half support, half ritual, and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Order, Support, Doe

  Florida Scott-Maxwell (2013). “Measure of My Days”, p.78, Knopf

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• It is my contention that ritual begins at home, in domestic magic.

  E. M. Broner

  Home, Magic, Contention

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• ritual lulls our fear of disorder with the certainty of order.

  E. M. Broner

  Order, Certainty, Lulls

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• [Ritual] dwells in an invisible reality and gives this reality a vocabulary, props, costume, gesture, scenery. Ritual makes things separate, sets them apart from ordinary affairs and thoughts. Rituals need not be solemn, but they are formalized, stylized, extraordinary, and artificial. In the name of ritual, we can do anything. We can do astonishing acts. In the end, ritual gives us assurance about the unification of things.

  Barbara Myerhoff

  Reality, Names, Vocabulary

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• We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

  Mitch Daniels

  Believe, Ignorance, Cutting

  Keynote Speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 11 February 2011, Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner, Washington, D.C.

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• I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Sometimes, Obsolete, Scope

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• It is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day.

  Brad Henry

  Democracy, Election, Wonderful

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• The opening and closing ceremonies of the London Olympics are mass satanic rituals disguised as a celebration of Britain and sport. Their medium is the language of symbolism.

  David Icke

  Sports, London Olympics, Symbolism

  "What the devil's he on about? David Icke says Opening Ceremony was a secret Satanic ritual" by Simon Head, www.mirror.co.uk. August 1, 2012.

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• I never cared about buying things for myself, like clothes. And then all of a sudden I realized how great it is to be very precise about the shirts that I wear and all the things that are a part of my closet. So the ritual of fashion and shopping became very personal to me.

  Marc Jacobs

  Fashion, Buying Things, Shopping

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• The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Religious, Drama, Imagination

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• We talked--recent history only--and Lucas relayed the story of how Francis came to be his roommate. "He showed up at the door one night, demanding to be let in. Napped on the sofa for an hour, then demanded to be let out. It turned into a nightly ritual, with him staying longer and longer, until at some point I realized he'd moved in. He's basically the most brazen squatter ever.

  Tammara Webber

  Night, Doors, Stories

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• The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. Though you may say the “I do” of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married.

  Kathleen Norris

  Mean, Saying Yes, Cost

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• The rottweiler stood his ground and waited for me to take the next step in the dance of ritualized intimidation. Instead, I leaped at him. Screw ritual. Now was not the time to stand on ceremony.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Next Steps, Rottweilers, Intimidation

  Kelley Armstrong (2012). “Werewolves: Book One: Bitten, Stolen and Beginnings”, p.1069, Vintage Canada

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