Quotes About Ritual

This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pants on the floor just in front of the same chair, and then contemplating the general result with superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it "too many for him" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that something he had eaten had not agreed with him.

Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I'm there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I'm ready for work.

Amin, am pecetluit eu totul, ÅŸi mi-am f?cut cruce, atent, s? fie dup? ritualul ortodox, nu dup? acela catolic, care mi-e mai la îndemîn?, o f?ceam pentru ei, nu pentru Dumnezeu, cu El m? înÅ£eleg ÅŸi f?r? mîini.

People who go to the Opera, they don't go to the toilet, not even at home.

So this was all you got:the zooty sideburns and masturbator's pallor of an old Ted in a black suit and the secular obsequies.

It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.

Only when she sits before her mirror to apply her makeup with care does she become a geisha. And I don't mean that this is when she begins to look like one. This is when she begins to think like one too.

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; and loyalty is a noble thing. I do not mean, of course, that loyalty must necessarily be expressed in group violence-merely that it is a precondition of it; that self-transcending devotion, all through history, has acted as a catalyst for secondary aggression.

The normal fast, then, involved abstaining from all forms of food, but not from water, and must be distinguished from the other two forms, the absolute fast and the partial fast, which we must now consider.

Humans are animals of habit.

Medicine was just another a tool you could try, no different from a healing ritual or a family remedy and no more effective.

Outside, the trees do their witchy dance.

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.

I wish I had a tray table in my bedroom and I wish I smoked, just so I could extinguish my smoking materials

Olives are the wishbones of the cocktail world; rarely are they freely passed along to somebody else.

strategy ceases to be strategy when it is reduced to ritual.

The Mysteries are teachings that cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, but only by the deep mind made accessible in trance. They may be conveyed by an object—a shaft of wheat, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries—by a key phrase, or symbol. The secret itself may be meaningless when out of context: only within the framework of the ritual does it take on its illuminating power.

A spell is a symbolic act done in an altered state of consciousness, in order to cause a desired change.

What about traditional Chinese and Sudanese ghost or spirit marriages, in which one of the partners is actually dead? In these societies a youth might be given in marriage to the dead son or daughter of another family, in order to forge closer ties between the two sets of relatives.

I think on my next birthday, I'm going to buy her a present. I think that should be the tradition. The kid gets gifts from everybody, and he buys one present for his mom since she was there, too. I think that would be nice.

The doctor was shaving this lawn as if it were a priest's chin. All

Ixion had committed one of the first blood murders; unless he was cleansed of his transgression, the Furies would pursue him until he went mad. The princes, lords and neighbouring landowners of Thessaly had cause to dislike Ixion and none offered to perform the catharsis, the ritual process of purification that would redeem him.

Christ. No, not Christ. These leavings were made in propitiation of a much older God than the Christian one. People have called Him different things at different times, but Rachel's sister gave Him a perfectly good name, I think: Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, God of dead things left in the ground, God of rotting flowers in drainage ditches, God of the Mystery.

The crowd could not know that they were cheering but somehow they did, somehow they understood that the circle between death-worship and death-wish had been completed for another year and the crowd went completely loopy, convulsing itself in greater and greater paroxysms.