Ritual Quotes - Page 20

• Women's scars and rituals involved beauty (piercing ears and noses, binding feet, and wearing corsets); men's involved protecting women. In cultures in which physical strength is still the best way to protect women, as among the Dodos in Uganda, each time a man kills a man, he is awarded a ritual scar; the more scars, the more he is considered eligible.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Feet, Uganda

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• It is one thing to say that the dwelling has symbolic and cosmological aspects... and another to say that it has been erected for ritual purposes and is neither shelter nor dwelling but a temple.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Dwelling, Temples, Purpose

  "Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space" by Michael Parker Pearson, ‎Colin Richards, (p. 49), 2003.

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• Memory, faith, and the natural world as both witness to the cycle of human life and healer to a questioning heart are at the core of this lovely and lyrical collection of poems. The weather changes, people come and go from cities and towns, babies are born, grow up and depart from their parents’ arms, but still, the countryside and its rituals sustain the people and creatures who know how to read the signs of the seasons. In these pages, Laura Grace Weldon shares those signs with us; her poems are the fruit of a wonderful harvest.

  Eleanor Lerman

  Baby, Growing Up, Memories

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• The ritual sacrifice of children has been taboo for thousands of years. Yet tragically it is practiced every day across our world. We sacrifice children on the altars of our most destructive sins. When the sickness of pornography has run to its most evil and destructive end, it takes the form of child pornography. When prostitution reaches its sickest, most depraved form, it becomes child prostitution.

  Wess Stafford

  Running, Children, Sacrifice

  Wess Stafford (2010). “Too Small to Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most”, p.2, WaterBrook

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• We can love religion as we need rituals, but The Holy Spirit is a bird, free to fly and land where it likes. We don't actually need 'religion' in order to have a relationship with The Holy Spirit. Too many wars an violence over religion.We need to see it's all the same spirit and we are part of that spirit so we shouldn't be fighting over what name we call it. It's a free bird.

  Sinead O'Connor

  War, Fighting, Order

  "Sinead O'Connor on Pope Benedict and Catholic abuse scandal". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. March 26, 2010.

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• Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness.

  Stanislav Grof

  Technology, Use, Substance

  Stanislav Grof (1998). “The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness”, p.260, SUNY Press

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• In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?

  Slavoj Žižek

  Kings, Decision, Democracy

  Slavoj Žižek (2009). “First As Tragedy, Then As Farce”, p.134, Verso

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• In the Native American tradition... a man, if he's a mature adult, nurtures life. He does rituals that will help things grow, he helps raise the kids, and he protects the people. His entire life is toward balance and cooperativeness. The ideal of manhood is the same as the ideal of womanhood. You are autonomous, self-directing, and responsible for the spiritual, social and material life of all those with whom you live.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Spiritual, Kids, Native American

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• I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Christmas, People, Charity

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• I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.

  James W. Fowler

  Faith, Believe, People

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• The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

  Norman Cousins

  Book, Ideas, Historical

  Norman Cousins (1967). “Present Tense; an American Editor's Odyssey”

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• Worship is not a repetitious exercise of rituals and formulas. These create a veil that actually prevents us from enjoying the presence of the Lord. Worship is the heart poured out in gratitude and awe, expressing our appreciation of who He is and what He has done for us by His grace through Jesus Christ.

  Dave Hunt

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Jesus

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• It was part of theTexas ritual? We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.

  Edna Ferber

  Caviar, Champagne, Hog

  1952 Giant, ch.2.

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• Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica.

  Roger Ebert

  Cannes Film Festival, Satanic, Festivals

  Roger Ebert (2013). “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”, p.145, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• For the first time i began to think, consciously and deliberately of religion and other worlds. The Hindu religion especially went up in my estimation; not the ritual or ceremonial part, but it's great books, the "Upnishads," and the "Bhagavad Gita."

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Book, Thinking, Other Worlds

  "An Autobiography". Book by Jawaharlal Nehru, 1936.

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• Give up all forms of parrotry. Start practicing whatever you truly feel to be true and justly to be just. Do not make a show of your faith and beliefs. You have not to give up your religion, but to give up clinging to the husk of mere ritual and ceremony. To get to the fundamental core of Truth underlying all religions, reach beyond religion.

  Meher Baba

  Giving Up, Diversity, Fundamentals

  "The Everything and the Nothing". Book by Meher Baba, 1963.

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• The symbolic display seen by the abductees is identical to the type of initiation ritual or astral voyage that is imbedded in the [occult] traditions of every culture...the structure of abduction stories is identical to that of occult initiation rituals...the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the [occult] entities that were described in centuries past.

  Jacques Vallee

  Past, Class, Culture

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• Rituals, even unhappy ones, provide a measure of comfort. Like a superstitious ballplayer who will only use certain bats, my depression rituals have become a fixed, normal part of my life. ... I need rituals to prevent unnecessarily rocking my already shaky emotional boat.

  David Karp

  Depression, Emotional, Unhappy

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• I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Envy, Support, Each Day

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• Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Animal, Vegetables, Miracle

  Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.284, Faber & Faber

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• Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

  John Berger

  Art, Nature, Drama

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.736, Vintage

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• Travel compels you to discover your spiritual side by elimination: Without all the rituals, routines and possessions that give your life meaning at home, you're forced to look for meaning within yourself Indeed, if travel is a process that helps you 'find yourself', it's because it leaves you with nothing to hide behind - it yanks you out from the realm of rehearsed responses and dull comforts, and forces you into the present. Here, in the fleeting moment, you are left to improvise, to come to terms with your raw, true self.

  Rolf Potts

  Spiritual, Home, Self

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• I still noticed that little streak of rebelliousness coming up in me again - the same sense of dissatisfaction I had felt earlier with the empty rituals and institutionalized values of all religious traditions.

  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

  Religious, Littles, Tradition

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• I am tolerably ignorant about Judaism, and much of what I do know about it seems hard to swallow, because it is so grounded in legalism, and adherence to rituals.

  Fred Melamed

  Ignorant, Adherence, Judaism

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• I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'

  Jodie Foster

  Atheist, Fun, Believe

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