Ritual Quotes - Page 17

• The Igbo used to say that they built their own gods. They would come together as a community, and they would express a wish. And their wish would then be brought to a priest, who would find a ritual object, and the appropriate sacrifices would be made, and the shrine would be built for the god.

  Chris Abani

  Sacrifice, Community, Wish

  "On humanity". TED Talks, www.ted.com. February, 2008.

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• In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.

  Marina Abramovic

  Soul, Understanding, Body

  therumpus.net.

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• Anybody can become a widow. There aren't any special qualifications. It happens in less time than it takes to draw a breath. It doesn't require the planning, for example, that it takes to become a wife or a mother or any of the other ritual roles of womanhood.

  Jacquelyn Mitchard

  Mother, Wife, Special

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• I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

  Kiefer Sutherland

  Years, Cooking, Way

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• I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action.

  Winifred Holtby

  Animal, Roots, Body

  Winifred Holtby, Alice Holtby (1941). “Letters to a friend”

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• Like the Pentagon, our social science often reduces all phenomena to dollars and body counts. Sexuality, family unity, kinship, masculine solidarity, maternity, motivation, nurturing, all the rituals of personal identity and development, all the bonds of community, seem "sexist," "superstitious," "mystical," "inefficient," "discriminatory." And, of course, they are -- and they are also indispensable to a civilized society.

  George Gilder

  Motivation, Community, Identity

  George F. Gilder (1973). “Sexual Suicide”, [New York] : Quadrangle

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• I don't feel any great need to subscribe to a certain notion of Buddhism that says "You have to do this" or "You have to do that." Buddhism does not prescribe rituals or prohibitions in the way many religions do.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Buddhism, Doe, Needs

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Harmony, Formulas

  Terry Tempest Williams (1984). “Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland”, p.69, UNM Press

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• Loneliness is random; solitude is ritual.

  Pearl Cleage

  Loneliness, Solitude

  Pearl Cleage (1990). “Mad at Miles: a blackwoman's guide to truth”, Cleage Group

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• Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from rituals of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements.

  Camille Paglia

  Rose, Elements, Flight

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.26, Canongate Books

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• Religion is not an end in itself. One's union with God is the ultimate goal. There are so many religions because immature people tend to emphasize trivial differences instead of important likenesses. Differences between faiths lie in creeds and rituals rather than in religious principles.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Religious, Lying, Differences

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.85, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• Virtually all the trends that matter are making a mockery of the industry's ritual incantations about the values and virtues of a free press in a free society.

  Hodding Carter III

  Trends, Matter, Virtue

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• It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

  Walter Kirn

  Self, Names, Wiping Out

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• War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.

  Arthur Koestler

  Loyalty, War, Self

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• This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Block, Thinking, Concern For Others

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Ritual is a terribly important, binding cement in a society. If we abandon formality and rituals, we're actually weakening the relationships that exist between people that bind.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  People, Important, Abandon

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

  H. L. Mencken

  College, Thinking, Ymca

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• Could it be that first love was the only true love? And that after those first fires had been doused or burned out, men and women chose whom they would love based on worldly needs, and then reenacted the rituals and feelings of that first pure experience - nursed the flames that once burned of their own accord

  Simon Van Booy

  First Love, Men, Fire

  Simon van Booy (2014). “The Secret Lives of People in Love”, p.132, Oneworld Publications

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• I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos.

  Kenneth Clark

  Hurt, Kindness, Believe

  Kenneth Clark, British Broadcasting Corporation (1970). “Civilization”, London : British Broadcasting Corporation

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• Los Angeles is a city looking for a ritual to join its fragments, and The Doors are looking for such a ritual also. A kind of electric wedding. We hide ourselves in the music to reveal ourselves.

  Jim Morrison

  Doors, Cities, Kind

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• For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.

  Andre Dubus

  Spiritual, Men, Dancing

  Andre Dubus (2010). “The Times Are Never So Bad: A Novella and Eight Short Stories”, p.121, Open Road Media

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• Most souls attend their funerals and have some feelings about them, but it's such an individual event. Some souls don't care what happens to their physical bodies. They see the funeral as a ritual for the living so they don't always attend.

  Echo Bodine

  Funeral, Soul, Feelings

  Echo Bodine (1999). “Echoes of the Soul: The Soul's Journey Beyond the Light — Through Life, Death, and Life After Death”, p.142, New World Library

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• There is one Cosmic Essence, all-pervading, all-knowing, all-powerful. This nameless formless essence can be approached by any name, any form, any symbol that suites the taste of the individual. Follow your religion, but try to understand the real purpose behind all of the rituals and traditions, and experience that Oneness.

  Swami Satchidananda

  Powerful, Real, Essence

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• People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That's fine, people need to give free reign to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition.

  Paulo Coelho

  Children, Imagination, People

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• Images, the visual power of present-day capitalism, like the ritual constructions of ancient Egypt, are refined ways of inhibiting and crushing man.

  Edmundo Desnoes

  Crush, Men, Egypt

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