Ritual Quotes - Page 30

• People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost.

  Michael Pollan

  Nature, People, Joy

  Michael Pollan (2013). “A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder”, p.196, Random House

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• In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.

  Walter Benjamin

  Art, Unique, Location

  Walter Benjamin (2015). “Illuminations”, p.170, Random House

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• The routines of almost all famous writers, from Charles Darwin to John Grisham, similarly emphasise specific starting times, or number of hours worked, or words written. Such rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motivation or inspiration happens to be present. They let people work alongside negative or positive emotions, instead of getting distracted by the effort of cultivating only positive ones. ‘Inspiration is for amateurs,’ the artist Chuck Close once memorably observed. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to work.

  Oliver Burkeman

  Motivation, Inspiration, Artist

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• But always and sometimes questioning the old modes
  And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor,
  Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual
  Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now,
  Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Growing Up, Demand

  John Ashbery (1985). “A Wave: Poems”, p.79, Ardent Media

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• LOVE is essentially self-communicative: those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.... No amount of rites, rituals, ceremonies, worship, meditation, penance and remembrance can produce love in themselves. None of these is necessarily a sign of love. On the contrary, those who sigh loudly and weep and wail have yet to experience love. Love sets on fire the one who finds it. At the same time it seals his lips so that no smoke comes out

  Meher Baba

  Love, Fire, Self

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• Sycamore trees were held to be sacred in ancient Egypt and are the first trees represented in ancient art. The sycamore, also, was sacred. Peasants gather around them in rituals. In the Land of the Dead there was a sycamore in whose branches the goddess Hathor lived; she leaned out of it giving sustenance and water to deceased souls. In Memphis, Hathor's epithet was Lady of the Sycamore.

  Larry Gates

  Life, Art, Egypt

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• You can't put a price on the rituals of love, because you never know what will happen next. I suppose fear is part of the excitement and we can't have one without the other.

  Simon Van Booy

  Love Is, Next, Excitement

  Simon van Booy (2014). “The Secret Lives of People in Love”, p.75, Oneworld Publications

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• Churches crack me up. They're like money, a conspiracy of faith. Like everyone agreed to believe that not only is there a God, but he comes down and checks on folks, so long as they hang in certain places, put up alters, burn lots of candles and incense, and perform sit-stand-kneel and other wacky rituals that'd make a coven of witches not look OCD.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Believe, Long, Church

  Karen Marie Moning (2012). “Iced: Fever Series”, p.136, Delacorte Press

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