Ritual Quotes - Page 12

• Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious powers behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Religious, Real, Practice

  J. M. Coetzee (1999). “Disgrâce”, Random House (UK)

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• What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to 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.

  Albert Camus

  Running, Cutting, Luxury

  "The Stranger". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

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• I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Prayer, Believe, Everyday

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• 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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• The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.

  William Barclay

  Men, Spirit, Worship

  William Barclay (1956). “The Gospel of John”

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• To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.

  Phillip Adams

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

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• There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of true believers each damns all the others with more or less heartiness - and each is a mighty fortress of graft.

  Upton Sinclair

  Order, Heaven, Religion

  Upton Sinclair (2005). “The Profits of Religion”, p.23, Cosimo, Inc.

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• History is the enactment of ritual on a permanent and universal stage; and its perpetual commemoration.

  Norman O. Brown

  History, Stage, Commemoration

  Norman O. Brown (1990). “Love's Body, Reissue of 1966 edition”, p.116, Univ of California Press

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• The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.

  H. G. Wells

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Choices

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• Every time I dance I have a high. I mean every time I danced, it was the whole world was the stage and I was in control of it and there was a form and a ritual and yet it was spontaneous and life didn't matter after that of before

  Jacques d'Amboise

  Motivational, Dance, Mean

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• You could also say that a precious brand often has rituals associated with it. They reinforce the specialness of the brand. And of course the brand owner can help ensure those rituals are created.

  Andrew Doyle

  Business, Helping, Owners

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• Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.

  Ian Mcewan

  Littles, Superstitions, Said

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• I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution.

  Temple Grandin

  Believe, Mean, Animal

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• The gospel is not outward rituals and sacrifices, it is a living sacrifice. It is to have the laws of God written in our heart. It is to have a soft, listening, responding heart to God.

  Leslie Ludy

  Heart, Sacrifice, Law

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• Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mean, Dark, Past

  "Oryx and Crake". Book by Margaret Atwood, 2003.

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• THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart. Suddenly you flare again in my sight A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only shade And I am blessed and choose again, That which I chose before.

  Wendell Berry

  Blessed, Heart, Wild Roses

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• The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you.

  Christopher Nolan

  Selfish, People, Competition

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• Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Beautiful, Hands, Bitter

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• This world belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?

  Ken Kesey

  Wise, Strong, Law

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.33, Hamilton Books

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• Sometimes I have experienced God in extraordinary ways - in dramatic surprises or soul-expanding insights or unexplainable mystical encounters. More often, I have felt God's reality in the simple encouragement of a friend, in the gentle inspiration of a sermon, or in the familiar ritual of the Eucharist and I'd be less than honest if I didn't also say that at times, I've found myself in the spiritual doldrums, cast adrift, wondering if the wind would ever blow again.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Spiritual, Encouragement, Inspiration

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• There was no violence, no speed. It moved to the rhythm of an elder dance, putting all the rituals of the world to shame. Black, silver, gold and moon-opal, night and sea, fire, earth, air and water.

  Tanith Lee

  Moon, Night, Fire

  Tanith Lee (2015). “Black Unicorn”, p.44, Hachette UK

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• You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

  Jerry Garcia

  Life, Music, Power

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• The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.

  Wendell Berry

  Differences, Perfect, Movement

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.12, Counterpoint

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• I had to de-program myself. From myself. Had to reinvent rituals of purification. So full of the vagrant pollutions of others. It was time to detox. Not only from alcohol, sex, and drugs, but from needy leeches who looked to swab me with their sores. Detox from my own needy lechery. Had to locate the center wound and cauterize. Undo the original sin, the origin of my sickness...Had to learn to replace Them, It, Want, Hurt, Anger, Sorrow, Loss, with Power, Healing, Wisdom, Fulfillment, Satisfaction.

  Lydia Lunch

  Hurt, Sex, Healing

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• It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.

  Twyla Tharp

  Giving Up, Creative, Patterns

  Twyla Tharp, Mark Reiter (2003). “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life”, Simon and Schuster

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