Quotes About Rituals

The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.

The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation.

I'm going to marry a Jewish woman because I like the idea of getting up Sunday morning and going to the deli.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

Taboo is not a word considered with any seriousness in the Old World.

Assyrian qunnabu, meaning 'noise': it was thought the Assyrians used cannabis as an incense in religious ceremonies and were quite vocal after inhaling it.

My Subtext Research revealed that the women I met cared less about the time they spent in their cars than they did about leaving the safety nets they called home. Distance wasn't an issue; leaving the safe space was. In general, their lives as nonworking wives and mothers revolved around routines and rituals, with their cars becoming almost like small houses on wheels. One

Hence every external worship and religion is dregs, which alone are left to be drunk by those who by it exalt themselves over others.

THE PUZZLE of cannibalism concerns the socially sanctioned con­ sumption of human flesh when other foods are available.

The only thing different about the Aztecs is that the meat was human meat.

Aztecs had not only failed to repress the eating of enemy dead, they were practicing a state-sponsored form of human sacrifice and cannibalism on a scale never rivaled before or since.

Roman culture was marked by a reluctance ever entirely to discard its past practices, tending instead to preserve all kinds of 'fossils' – in religious rituals or politics, or whatever – even when their original significance had been lost.

Generations of families flocked to Pastor Richot's steps to partake in, not only the weekly liturgy, but baptisms, marriages, and funerals—a one-stop shop for the faithful.

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations, and occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts.

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.

As late as the twelfth century only the higher classes faithfully observed the Christian rites; while the old pagan ceremonies were still common among the peasantry. And even now the Saints of the Calendar are in some places only thinly disguised heathen deities and pagan rites and superstitions mingle with Christian observances.

Catholicism, I discovered, was a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin and guilt.

Catholic, I discovered, meant a type of Christianity for humans who like gold leaf, Latin, and guilt.

but the real shock this past year was finding out how frail has been our illusion of stability all along. We were a shallow country, held together by stale rituals and muscle memory. And now it is a shallow man who will take us wherever he pleases.

Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation.

Remember the dead do not eat actual solid food, any more than the gods do. They eat the spirit of the food. The priests say a picture of food, or words describing food are as tasty and pleasing as the real thing, to a dead person.

Today's religions are nothing but the long-lived mythologies!

A tradition that we'll never let go. A tradition that I probably will never let go of either, simply because like religion, culture is nailed into you so deep you can't escape it. No matter how far you run.