Quotes About Ritual

What I began to realize was that habit refers to how you perform an action, not what the action is.

We see that that ritual of reading every evening at the end of the bed when they were so little--set time, set gestures-- was like a prayer.

He was always on the lookout for the secret core of primitive ritual and magical belief hidden within the seemingly "rational" processes of modernity.

She helped Shamron into his jacket and kissed his cheek. There was simple ritual in this act. How many times had he separated from his wife after hearing that Jews had been killed by a bomb? He had lost count long ago. He had resigned himself, late in life, that it would never end.

No reason. Because it's always been done that way. That's the standard explanation for anything.

find. At the time, I thought Lewis was a bit hung up on ritual (sacramentalism), but I overlooked this fault

The universality of tattooing is a curious subject for speculation.

His guests found it fun to watch him make tea -- mixing careful spoonfuls from different caddies.

A few years ago we discussed when Sabbath truly begins. When is the precise moment of the setting sun? So I made a rug weaving together black and deep purple. When the light faded enough, and one could no longer tell the difference between the two colors, then Sabbath had begun and prayers could be made.

What I thought was infinite will turn out to be just a couple of odds and ends, a tiny miscellany, miniature stuff, fragments of novelties, of no great moment. But it will also be enough, maybe even more than enough, to suggest an immense ritual and tradition. And this makes me very happy. From "Happy As The Day Is Long

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

She blushed. I love it when women blush, especially those big butch girls who know you want them. And I wanted her. I did. I wanted her. But she was a difficult woman, wouldn't let me give her a backrub, read her palm, or sew up the tear in her jeans—all those ritual techniques Southern femmes have employed in the seduction of innocent butch girls.

Lymond said, "Those who gather frankincense are dedicated unto divine honours, and use no carnal company with any woman.

There's something hypnotic about the word tea.

The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.

he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed.

Nine Tailors Make a Man.

I've seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night.

A wedding is a ritual which exists in most societies, only at varying levels of involvement, from a simple agreement to meet, say, once a year for dinner, to the mutual exchanging of left limbs.

Pain is a ritual we all must endure." 2

Douglas L. Wilson

There is no evidence of sexual or religious ritual, or any kind of game or group orgy.

Far more than the casual recreation we think of when it comes to games of skill in Mesoamerican cultures the ball game was a sacred ritual that reenacted the struggle between the forces of good and evil. It might also have been a way for groups to avoid warfare by solving conflicts through a match instead, one that occasionally ended with human sacrifice…

A good ritual is meant to evoke the mystery of being, the mystery of our own existence, the mystery of life, the mystery of God. It's meant to evoke that sense of eternity that shines through the latticework of time and space. That's really what ritual is for—to put us in touch with that sense of eternity, with the sense of the sacred.