Quotes About Ritual

The bar was also a reminder of an age when the upper middle classes poured enormous quantities of hard liquor down their throats at every occasion in which more than two people were in a room for more than three minutes.

He had also by this time begun to indulge in cannibalism, believing that his victims would live on inside him if he consumed their flesh.

I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else.

I go living, more from force of habit than anything else.

I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea, said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. And asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn't but of course I'll ask her just as if I didn't know.

I don't think it's any help that it's your habit. What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying, `Excuse me, you mustn't mind it. . .it's just a habit I've got.' You'd think he was crazy, wouldn't you?

As we approached the forty-five-day mark, we heard that it was an ancient tradition at that monastery to spend one week in the middle of the ninety days without any sleep at all.

weekend ritual to sit on the bench together, drinking our morning coffee.

Owen and I have made it our weekend ritual to sit on the bench together drinking our morning coffee. It's our time to catch up on the week as the sun rises slowly over the San Francisco Bay, catching the bench in its warmth.

No le fue fácil meter en la maleta el día en que hicieron su primera comunión las tres juntas. La vela, el libro y la foto afuera de la iglesia cupieron muy bien, pero no así el sabor de los tamales y del atole que Nacha les había preparado y que habían comido después en compañía de sus amigos y familiares.

I don't think we can do that. At these prices you should bring the cow out and have a ritual sacrifice at the table. Just do it. I handed him the menu. He took it.

I told you it was a backwoods. They probably still practice corn sacrifice.

A drink? No, whatever for? He used the downstairs lavatory because one really didn't want the nuisance of a full bladder in media res, poured himself a glass of Evian water because one didn't want a dry mouth, either, and mounted the stairs to the master bedroom.

I love Starbucks. Maybe that's a bit sad. But I definitely need my caffeine. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

....the ancient ritual of the earth; ploughing and planting, reaping and threshing. The fundamental business remains unaltered; it is only the methods and tools that science is changing.

Magic is an ancient practice that has power over superstitious mind.

Any ceremony performed in the absence of reasonable knowledge as to cause and effect is magic.

There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.

Blood cannot be without dancing. There is no dancing without blood.

When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

It has not only detested beauty when produced at the price of justice; it has rejected the ritual when performed by the morally corrupted. Even religion itself, worship, was not considered to be an absolute. "Your prayers are an abomination," said Isaiah to the exploiters of the poor. Stay away from the synagogue, wrote the Gaon of Wilna to his household, if you cannot abstain from envy and gossiping about the dresses of your fellow attendants.

Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life. (as said by Mrs. Pearson)

A tradition is a living argument. A living argument for a practice that began a long time ago.

My day begins at dawn as I take my cup of strong black espresso outside to watch the sunrise. I learned this ritual from my mother, who worked in a bread shop. Bakers are the great philosophers of the world, mostly because they have to get up early. When the world is quiet, great art is created - or, at the very least, conceptualized. Now is the moment to sketch, make notes, and dream.