Quotes About Ritual

One of the most striking patterns we discovered while researching this book – indeed, one of the patterns that felt most like a genuine breakthrough to us – was how, time and again in human history, that zone of ritual play has also acted as a site of social experimentation – even, in some ways, as an encyclopaedia of social possibilities.

If 'the state' means anything, it refers to precisely the totalitarian impulse that lies behind all such claims, the desire effectively to make the ritual last forever.

Up early on Friday, May 18, the day when nominations were to be made, he passed some time playing "fives"—a variety of handball—with some other men in a vacant lot next to the Illinois State Journal office.

Custom is the great guide of human life.

Ritual may be vital to reaction, but it is also the life blood of revolution.

As soon as I got the baguette outside, I'd pinch off the crusty end—le quignon

I splashed some water on my face again because I thought that's what you do in a crisis. You wash your face. Did it really help, or was it a myth circulated by the soap industry?

The heart, with the other parts removed, were placed in a tin box, which had formerly contained flour, and decently and reverently buried in a hole dug some four feet deep on the spot where they stood. Jacob was then asked to read the Burial Service, which he did in the presence of all. The body was left to be fully exposed to the sun. No other means were taken to preserve it, beyond

With the Irishmen at bat the dog acts as a charm. He sits at the far end of the dugout. Whoever touches him on his way to the plate will have luck with hi as he swings. Each batter leaving the dugout places his hand on London's head.

The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation.

Their kitchen is their shrine, the cook their priest, the table their altar, and their belly their god.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

God makes me play well. That is why I always make the sign of the cross when I walk out onto the field. I feel I would be betraying Him if I didn't.

What is gayer than believing in a household god?

The two stallions, the silver and the black, represent the equine god (whomsoever horses pray to) in this ritual so ancient that no one knows what god to thank.

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.

Prayer is a ritual! But at the root of prayer is the idea of complete bowing down in submission to the Will of God.

Religion is god's population-control tool

Did god make man too perfect, So that a piece has to be removedthrough circumcision?

Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, "This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal."

I pray before everything. When I wake up, before I eat, before I perform, before I go to sleep, in the moments I need guidance.

This supernatural bread and this consecrated chalice are for the health and salvation of mankind.

Before redeye flights, I drink copious amounts of herbal brews to help me relax and fall asleep after takeoff.