“An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture.”
"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris", Ch. 4, p. 122
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jeff VanderMeer 24
American writer 1968Related quotes
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 465
“It's about time! It's supposed to be a ritual, not a marathon.”
Source: Claimed By Shadow
"Redemption song," Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, December 16, 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview15/.
Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 72.
The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: If something becomes common enough to turn into a ritual, and then starts to involve really large numbers of people, that's when the ritual becomes something else. It becomes widespread enough to affect the general agreement we all share. So, that's when the responsibility for running it goes out of your hands to be taken over by the institutions set up to run the rituals that matter on a regular basis, so that people can have clear rules and regulations to follow if they decide to get up to that particular ritual. The institutions take the admin out of daily life and run it for you: banking, government, sewage, tax collecting. Or, if you break the rules and regulations, one institution can take you out of daily life. This one: (James Burke displays a trial.) In every community, the law -- whether it's dressed up like this or the village elders telling you what the local custom is -- the law is all those rules I was on about earlier. I suppose what institutions like this do, most of all, is the dirty work. While they're putting them away here in the law court, for instance, that leaves us free to get on with making money, having a career, and avoiding the social responsibilities that these people have to deal with. And after a few centuries of this buck-passing, the institutions get big and powerful, and reach into everybody's lives so much they become hard to alter and virtually impossible to get rid of.
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 1, p. 1 (the opening paragraph of the book)
“Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”