Ritual Quotes - Page 8

• Lord Raziel. Surely yoy would not have allowed such a thing as a ritual by wich you might be summoned to exist if you did not intend to be summoned. We Nephilim are your children. We need your guidance

  Cassandra Clare

  Children, Nephilim, Needs

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• In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.

  Florence King

  Boys, Names, Males

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• The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play....We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.

  Johan Huizinga

  Civilization, Play, Dancing

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• Man cannot be enlightened through any organization, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through understanding the contents of his own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

  Radhanath Swami

  Philosophical, Men, Organization

  Radhanath Swami (2016). “The Journey Home”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

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• We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

  Alain de Botton

  Letting Go, Struggle, Secular Society

  "Katie Antoniou interviews Alain de Botton on his new book 'Religion for Atheists'". Interview with Katie Antoniou, www.run-riot.com. January 24, 2012.

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• Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep.

  Ernest Gellner

  Strong, Party, Sheep

  Ernest Gellner (1994). “Conditions of liberty: civil society and its rivals”, Hamish Hamilton Ltd

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• Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, are things Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy, an ethical system, and a superstition.

  Samuel Chadwick

  Christian, Philosophy, Fire

  Samuel Chadwick (2007). “The Way to Pentecost”, CLC Publications

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• Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfilment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.

  Salomon Bochner

  Truth, Science, Doe

  Salomon Bochner “Collected Papers of Salomon Bochner”, American Mathematical Soc.

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• I remember sitting at the end of my mum's bed being fascinated by her ritual of getting dressed. It was a very methodical and considered process. I suppose you could say she was my first real muse.

  Matthew Williamson

  Fashion, Real, Bed

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• This is criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the reality of the love which it manifests.

  Bede Griffiths

  Spiritual, Reality, Church

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• The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Honor, Criticism

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• I think the important thing to learn is that we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

  Richard Dawkins

  Loyalty, Religious, Business

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• Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Life, Forever

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.396, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Football is the last sacred ritual of our time.

  Pier Paolo Pasolini

  Football, Sacred, Lasts

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• Little wonder that we. . .find the old pictures of openness - pictures usually without any blur, and made by what seems a ritual of patience - wonderful. They restore to us knowledge of a place we seek but lose in the rush of our search. Though to enjoy even the pictures, much less the space itself, requires that we be still longer than is our custom.

  Robert Adams

  Photography, Space, Littles

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• Terrorism drives out all normal human activity before it, defining life in its own sick terms, if it can. So, a baseball game on a sultry Texas night before a huge crowd, with everyone feeling perfectly safe, is exactly what terrorists hate. Which is why it is so important to resume such athletic rituals - which symbolize stability, confidence and order - as soon as is reasonably possible.

  Thomas Boswell

  Sports, Baseball, Hate

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• Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. In time, a pair invents its own commonwealth, complete with anthems, rituals, and lingos-a cult of two with fallible gods.

  Diane Ackerman

  Inspirational, Couple, Jigsaw Puzzles

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Males, Western Culture

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• Every day my mother had tea. My dad has his ritual cigar. They had their evening cocktail. Those rituals were done nicely, with flair and feeling.

  John Travolta

  Mother, Dad, Feelings

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• In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Japan, Small Rooms, Perfection

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• In the New Hebrides, any dancer making a mistake was assaulted, wounded, and possibly killed by bowmen posted to keep careful watch for inaccuracies in rituals.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Mistake, Dancing

  Jamake Highwater (1992). “Dance: Rituals of Experience”, p.39, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Since the nature of people is bad, to become corrected they must be taught by teachers and to be orderly they must acquire ritual and moral principles.

  Xunzi

  Teacher, Nature, People

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• We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

  Abraham Verghese

  Motivation, Believe, Inspiration

  "A doctor's touch". TED Talks, www.ted.com. July 2011.

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• Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Steps, Purpose, Phrases

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• If we fail to provide boys with pro-social models of the transition to adulthood, they may construct their own. In some cases, gang initiation rituals, street racing, and random violence may be the result.

  Leonard Sax

  Boys, Random Violence, Racing

  Leonard Sax (2009). “Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men”, p.168, Basic Books

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