Ritual Quotes - page 9

Of course, the trouble with following occult texts blindly is that there is no guarantee that the thing the ritual summons is what it says on the label. (Charles Stross)
What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again. View quote
Albert Camus
Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you. View quote
Jonathan Stroud
It's not a fantasy performance, Jane. Come on. Everything I do is real. It comes out of my head. I live this life every day. When I'm onstage it's my therapy. It's not a performance. It's a ritual. And the ultimate performance would be when I've reached my peak and I'm not there yet so don't you all clap when I say this I'll commit suicide and I'll take your kids with me. View quote
GG Allin
Everyone at the Hayholt had seemed obsessed with the empty ritual of power, something Miriamele had lived with for so long that it held no interest for her. It was like watching a confusing game played by bad-tempered children. View quote
Tad Williams
As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits. View quote
Carl Sagan
The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon. View quote
Anthony Bourdain
People are losing jobs, people need to be entertained, and I want to make movies that parents and children can look forward to seeing, that can become a kind of family ritual. View quote
Nicolas Cage
There are others where religion is nothing but ritual; and these are worse than the first, for the Spirit of God is not in them, and they are inflated with self-righteousness. View quote
Desiderius Erasmus
Insomnia is a very prevalent issue. It's a women's health issue, and I chose to talk about it because so many people have experienced it to varying degrees. For me, I'm doing great now, but it took a lot of work to figure out how to get back to sleep. I had to change some of my habits. I developed some pretty bad sleep ritual habits. View quote
Jenny Lewis
Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning. (Tom Robbins)
Was I born to become a ritual mourner? View quote
Czesław Miłosz
The sinners would have included those who did not pay their tithes (one tenth of their income) to the priests, and those who were negligent about the sabbath rest and about ritual cleanliness. The laws and customs on these matters were so complicated that the uneducated were quite incapable of understanding what was expected of them. Education in those days was a matter of knowing .. the law and all its ramifications. The illiterate and uneducated were inevitably lawless and immoral. The ‘am ha-arez, or uneducated peasants, ‘the rabble who know nothing of the law' (John 7:49) were regarded by even the most enlightened Pharisees, like Hillel, as incapable of virtue and piety. View quote
Albert Nolan
"Third and finally, poetry originated as a form of vocal music. It began as a performative and auditory medium, linked to music and dance and associated with civic ceremony, religious ritual, and magic. (The earliest poetry almost certainly served a shamanistic function.) Most aboriginal cultures did not distinguish poetry from song because the arts were so interrelated as to be porous. Nor did the classical Greek or Chinese cultures two or three millennia ago differentiate poetry from song" (10). View quote
Dana Gioia
... the idea of Gaia is anticipated most clearly in a line from the Tao Te Ching, the oldest Taoist scripture. In ancient Chinese rituals, straw dogs were used as offerings to the gods. During the ritual they were treated with the utmost reverence. When it was over and they were no longer needed they were trampled on and tossed aside: 'Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.' If humans disturb the balance of the Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside. Critics of the Gaia theory say they reject it because it is unscientific. The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs. View quote
John N. Gray
It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe. View quote
Victor Hugo
I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible. View quote
Florence King
Your parents had a third parent-television. If you went back to 1950, you would be surprised. Many people-of all kinds and conditions-had just two parents. In the time since then, the referee has won all the championship matches-and the referee is a value-free ritual. View quote
George W. S. Trow
The 1960s weren't the 1920s again; they were the Liberal Arts expressed in the negative. The 1970s, despite the hedonism, weren't the 1920s; they were the Negative out to get all the rewards formerly held by the Positive. The Goat and Adding Machine Ritual is now. View quote
George W. S. Trow
The putting on of vestments and lighting candles, it's a wonderful ritual that never changes from one Mass to another. View quote
Liam Neeson
Hypostatized into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes ideology. But its content and function distinguish it from classical forms of ideology; it is not false consciousness, but a rather consciousness of falsehood, a falsehood which is corrected in the context of the higher truth represented by the objective historical interest. (Herbert Marcuse)
Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river. View quote
Eckhart Tolle
We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations. View quote
Walter Benjamin
It's become something of a ritual - every year, Google publishes its year-end summary of what the world wants, and every year I complain about how shallow it is, given what Google really knows about what the world is up to. View quote
John Battelle
As part of the ritual of becoming a man, my maternal uncle, a judge, and his four sons, each older than me, took me deer hunting. View quote
Hisham Matar