Quotes about ceremony

A collection of quotes on the topic of ceremony, use, likeness, life.

Quotes about ceremony

“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“My sons’ birthday; we have a grand feeding
Another sons thread ceremony is proceeding
Life is busy you know if you ever say
The death god will be laughing behind you, I say
Not eaten dinner, have not seen the favourite show
Some debtors are waiting to get my loan, No way
Once your purpose is over, no time is wasted away
Think meanwhile of Purandara Vittala with a bow.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this quote Dasa is warning against the inevitable when one is busy with worldly chores as given here[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 81]

Life, Death, God, Way

“Lastly, we must also know what Baptism signifies, and why God has ordained just such external sign and ceremony for the Sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church. But the act or ceremony is this, that we are sunk under the water, which passes over us, and afterwards are drawn out again. These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man, both of which must take place in us all our lives, so that a truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.”

Martin Luther Luther's Large Catechism

"On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism (1529)

Life, Death, God, Water

“The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus (1585)
Context: The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry; those who by the grace of heaven would reform obscure and corrupted faith, salve the cruelties of perverted religion and remove abuse of superstitions, mending the rents in their vesture. It is not they who indulge impious curiosity or who are ever seeking the secrets of nature, and reckoning the courses of the stars. Observe whether they have been busy with the secret causes of things, or if they have condoned the destruction of kingdoms, the dispersion of peoples, fires, blood, ruin or extermination; whether they seek the destruction of the whole world that it may belong to them: in order that the poor soul may be saved, that an edifice may be raised in heaven, that treasure may be laid up in that blessed land, caring naught for fame, profit or glory in this frail and uncertain life, but only for that other most certain and eternal life.

Life, World, Faith, Religion

“The object of a ceremony is not to be beautiful, though that is a valuable element. The object of a ceremony is to be ceremonious. Ritual is a need of the human soul — nay, it is rather a need of the human body, like exercise. A man does not take off his hat to a lady because he looks nicer without it; the instance of bald men would be alone sufficient to upset such an explanation. He does it because you must positively do something when you meet a lady, or your whole civilisation goes to pieces; and taking off your hat is easier than taking off your necktie or lying face downwards on the pavement.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton : The Illustrated London News, 1905-1907 (1986), p. 191

Men, Beauty, Exercises, Soul

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, 29 Sep 2002. Speeches Source: War Talk

People, Color, Clothes, Dead

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Life, Tea

“The story of how anti-Hindu laws were enacted… is long. In summary form, it consists of 1) banishing Brahmins on pain of being made prisoners on the galleys; 2) confiscating the properties of those Hindus who sent their families to neighbouring lands for fear of conversion; 3) prohibiting the performance of Hindu rites and ceremonies; 4) banning Hindu priests and preachers from doing their religious duties; 5) compelling Hindus to attend church services and listen to Christian doctrines; 6) depriving Hindus of their traditional rights and privileges in village communities; 7) forcing the baptism of Hindu orphans; and 8) ordering Hindus not to ride on horseback or in palanquins. The laws were so designed as to humiliate the Hindus in every conceivable manner… Missionary records, however, refer to many famous Hindu temples being converted into churches at these places… Even private temples in Hindu homes were prohibited and “transgressors” were severely punished…”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission. 1985.

Pain, Fear, Family, Law

“The essential in Christianity, past, present and future, is loving Christ and one another, and if the Quaker finds God in the silence and the Salvation Army in the band, the Roman Catholic in the Mass and the Baptist in immersion; if the High Anglican likes incense and ceremonial, and the Methodist puts his emphasis on personal experience, the fellowship of the authentic class meeting and Charles Wesley’s hymns, why talk of disunity?”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29

Love, God, Silence, Past

“Now, through my own infirmity I recover what he was to me: my opposite. Being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his own advancement, save that he had also great compassion. […] We have no ceremonies, only private dirges and no conclusions, only violent sensations, each separate. Nothing that has been said meets our case. […] After a long lifetime, loosely, in a moment of revelation, I may lay hands on it, but now the idea breaks in my hand. Ideas break a thousand times for once that they globe themselves entire. […] I am yawning. I am glutted with sensations. I am exhausted with the strain and the long, long time — twenty-five minutes, half an hour — that I have held myself alone outside the machine.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard on Percival, section V
The Waves (1931)

Truth, Art, Idea, Nature

“Gay unions, what is that about? I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more … I think is a bit tragic. I am looking forward to gay divorces.”

Boy George (1961) English musician

The London Evening Standard, 20 February 2006:

People, Idea, Thinking

“At the ceremony of signing the decoration I met Field-Marshal Montgomery for the first time. During the war I had closely followed the actions of British troops under his command. In 1940 the British Expeditionary Corps had sustained a disastrous setback at Dunkirk. Later, British troops under Montgomery's command had smashed the German corps under General Rommel at El Alamein. During the Normandy landing Montgomery had ably commanded the Allied forces and their advance to the banks of the Seine. Montgomery was above medium height, very agile, soldierly, trim and created an impression of a lively and intelligent man. He began to talk about the operations at El Alamein and at Stalingrad. In his view the two operations were of equal significance. I did not want to belittle the merits of the British troops, but still I had to explain to him that the El Alamein operation was carried out on an army scale, while at Stalingrad the operation engaged a group of fronts and it had a vast strategic importance- it resulted in the rout of a maor enemy force in the area of the Volga and Don rivers and later, in the North Caucasus. It was an operation that actually marked a radical turning-point in the war and ensured the retreat of the German forces from our country.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

p. 661

War, Intelligence, Time, Country

“The highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion is the date of one's own birth. Every man is a god if he chooses to recognize himself as one. So, the Satanist celebrates his own birthday as the most important holiday of the year. Despite the fact that some of us may not have been wanted, or at least were not particularly planned, we're glad, even if no one else is, that we're here! You should give yourself a pat on the back, buy yourself whatever you want, treat yourself like the king (or god) that you are, and generally celebrate your birthday with as much pomp and ceremony as possible. After one's own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are Walpurgisnacht and Halloween (or All Hallows' Eve). The solstices and equinoxes are also celebrated as holidays, as they herald the first day of the seasons.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

God, Religion, Birthday, Birth

“Time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagination that we can catch him out.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 115 (Vintage 2003)

Imagination, Time

“In the character of the victim [Lincoln], and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy—it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Addressing the House of Commons after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1 May 1865)
1860s

Home, History, Question, Heart

“First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Nature, Animals

“Listen, even before your religion was born not even two thousand years ago the Chinese had a very high philosophy and knew a path leading them to the Divine; and when they think of Westerners, they think of them as barbarians. And you are going there to convert those who know more about it than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness?”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

On her opinion given to the Priest who was on his way to China as a missionary, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in The Mother: The Story of Her Life by Georges Van Vrekhem (2004) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=8hgG8aweqncC&pg=RA1-PA40, p. 40

Life, Religion, Thinking

“African independence was greeted with pomp, ceremony, and a resurgence of traditional African music and dance. “A new day has dawned,” “we are on the threshold of a new era,” “we have now entered into the political kingdom”—those were the phrases of the day, and they were repeated until they became clichés.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 446.

Music, Dance

“Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

In reaction to statements by Maurice O'Connor Drury who expressed disapproval of depictions of an ancient Egyptian god with an erect phallus, in "Conversations with Wittgenstein" as quoted in Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas Eldridge, p. 130
Attributed from posthumous publications

Marriage, World, Religion, Sex

“The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World. I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour to lessen it in any Man. But I wish it were more productive of good Works, than I have generally seen it: I mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing; performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers, filled with Flatteries and Compliments, despis’d even by wise Men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a Duty; the hearing and reading of Sermons may be useful; but, if Men rest in Hearing and Praying, as too many do, it is as if a Tree should Value itself on being water’d and putting forth Leaves, tho’ it never produc’d any Fruit.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Joseph Huey (6 June 1753); published in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, volume 3, p. 145.
Epistles

Men, God, World, Faith

“Elements of empirical language are manipulated in their rigidity, as if they were elements of a true and revealed language. The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964), p. 7

“The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 127

“The only stipulations I shall contend for are, that in all things you shall do as you please. I will do the same; and that no ceremony may be used or any restraint be imposed on any one.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to David Humphreys, inviting him to an indefinite stay at Mt. Vernon (10 October 1787), as published in Life and Times of David Humphreys (1917) by Frank Landon Humphreys, Vol. I, p. 426
1780s

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming

The Second Coming (1919)
Context: p>Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?</p

World, Passion

“For though some stop was put to the Cataphrygian Christianity, by Provincial Councils, till the fourth century; yet the Roman Emperors then turning Christians, and great multitudes of heathens coming over in outward profession, these found the Cataphrygian Christianity more suitable to their old principles, of placing religion in outward forms and ceremonies, holy-days, and doctrines of Ghosts, than the religion of the sincere Christians”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 13: Of the King who did according to his will, and magnified himself above every God, and honored Mahuzzims, and regarded not the desire of women
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: For though some stop was put to the Cataphrygian Christianity, by Provincial Councils, till the fourth century; yet the Roman Emperors then turning Christians, and great multitudes of heathens coming over in outward profession, these found the Cataphrygian Christianity more suitable to their old principles, of placing religion in outward forms and ceremonies, holy-days, and doctrines of Ghosts, than the religion of the sincere Christians: wherefore they readily sided with the Cataphrygian Christians, and established that Christianity before the end of the fourth century. By this means those of understanding, after they had been persecuted by the heathen Emperors in the three first centuries, and were holpen with a little help, by the conversion of Constantine the great and his sons to the Christian religion, fell under new persecutions, to purge them from the dissemblers, and to make them white, even to the time of the end.

Religion, Sincerity

“More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: Waking, Paradis and I look at each other, and remember. We return to life and daylight as in a nightmare. In front of us the calamitous plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe or rot.
Paradis says to me, "That's war."
"Yes, that's it," he repeats in a far-away voice, "that's war. It's not anything else."
He means — and I am with him in his meaning — "More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless monotony of misery, broken, by poignant tragedies; it is that, and not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle's chanticleer call to the sun!"
Paradis was so full of this thought that he ruminated a memory, and growled, "D'you remember the woman in the town where we went about a bit not so very long ago? She talked some drivel about attacks, and said, 'How beautiful they must be to see!'"
A chasseur who was full length on his belly, flattened out like a cloak, raised his bead out of the filthy background in which it was sunk, and cried, 'Beautiful? Oh, hell! It's just as if an ox were to say, 'What a fine sight it must be, all those droves of cattle driven forward to the slaughter-house!'

War, Water

“In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

World

“Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

People, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“You will show that thing to me and from now on, I will deal with them."

I opened my eyes really wide and fluttered my eyelashes at him. "I'm sorry, I must've missed your coronation ceremony. Silly me.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

“Everything rests on the poisoned wine. If it were just the queen, I could force it down her gullet, but Declan Broekhart would run me through with that damned ceremonial sword, and if his wife's stares were daggers, he'd be dead already.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

Wine, Dead

“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

People, Color, Clothes, Dead

“We’re Nephilim. Every one of our life’s passages has some mystical component — our births, our deaths, our, marriages, everything has a ceremony and a rune. There is one as well if you wish to become someone’s parabatai. It’s no small commitment.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Life, Death, Marriage, Birth

“Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

Michael Palin (1943) British comedian, actor, writer and television presenter

Women, Lying

“Well, there aren’t any graves in mundane wedding ceremonies,” said Tessa. “Though your ability to quote the Bible is impressive. Better than my aunt Harriet’s.”
“Did you hear that, James? She just compared us to her aunt Harriet.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Quotes, Wedding

“His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

“And once we reach the city, my stylist will dictate my look for the opening ceremonies tonight anyway. I just hope I get one who doesn't think nudity is the last word in fashion.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hope, Fashion, Thinking

“When you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Variant: When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
Source: The Road

“As soon as the engagement was announced, the Pack Clans converged and shot the idea of a quiet ceremony out of the water and then kept firing at it until it stopped convulsing and died.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Idea, Water

“The Apache don't have a word for love," he said.
"Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?"
"Tell me."
"Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Hondo

Love, Marriage

“It's a blessing Madame Gamache and I had at our wedding. It was read at the end of the ceremony.(Apache Blessing)”

Louise Penny book Bury Your Dead

Source: Bury Your Dead

Wedding, Reading

“As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

Life, People, Way, Travel

“The decline of Indian Buddhism was centrally due to the fact that it never offered the Indian laity a complete religion. Early Buddhism knew no ceremonies for birth and death, marriage, illness, and other critical turns of private life… Only for the community of monks did Buddhism provide a complete and well-defined way of life. …But Brahmins were needed for all the ordinary crises in life, ready with their rites and sacred formulas to ward off danger or minimize the damage. This elemental fact assured the survival of Brahminism in India.”

William H. McNeill book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community

The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963)

Life, Death, Marriage, Religion

“A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that "individuality" is the key to success.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Pete Goering (May 20, 2007) "A few tips for the graduates", The Topeka Capital-Journal, p. 1.
Attributed

Success, Graduation

“Each man's place in the social scheme of his village is know; the contribution which he must make to the work and ceremonial of the village and the share of the whole which he will receive back again are likewise defined. For failure to receive what is due to him, he is fined even more heavily than for failure to give that which is due from him. Just as a man must accept his privileges as well as discharge his duties, so is he also the guardian of his own status and if, as may happen to a high caste, that status is affronted, he himself must perform a ceremony to restore it.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 7

Failure

“These plays and stories have for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often 'Time.' His travellers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell of vague rebellion against that power, and all the beautiful things they have seen get something of their charm from the pathos of fragility. This poet who has imagined colours, ceremonies and incredible processions that never passed before the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe or of De Quincey, and remembered as much fabulous beauty as Sir John Mandeville, has yet never wearied of the most universal of emotions and the one most constantly associated with the sense of beauty; and when we come to examine those astonishments that seemed so alien we find that he has but transfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

About

Men, God, World, Beauty

“A culture is like the upright strands that you begin with in basket-making, round which you wind the texture of the basket itself: no sticks, no basket; no culture, no community. It is the grammar, the story, humour and good faith that identifies a community and gives it existence. It is both the parent and child of social capital. And the social capital of a community is its social life – the links of cooperation and friendship between its members. It is the common culture and ceremony, the good faith and reciprocal obligations the civility and citizenship, the play, humour and conversation which make a living community, the cooperation that builds its institutions. It is the social ecosystem in which a culture lives.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. xxi, introduction http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Life, Friendship, Faith, Communication

“That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Beauty, Feeling, Tea, Season

“How can anyone be interested in war? — that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well-chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it — this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?”

Margaret Caroline Anderson (1886–1973) American magazine editor

The Strange Necessity (1969), part 1.

Men, War, Business, Reading

“I remain detached and distant, but it is under my eyes and my orders that the work of art must create itself [Klein directed on 9 March 1960 for the first time nude models who were painting the walls with their moving naked bodies, he called this "Anthropometry"]. Then, when the creation starts, I stand there, present at the ceremony, immaculate, calm, relaxed, perfectly aware of what is going on and ready to welcome the work of art that is coming into existence in the tangible world... Hours of preparation for something that is executed, with extreme precision, in a few minutes. Just as with a judo throw.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1960; pp. 55-57
1960 -1964, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

World, Art, Distant, Time

“Besides the fact of the Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that they plainly maintained that all the heathen religions were false. The Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Hostility, War, Religion, Falseness

“And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostics, consisteth the Natural seed of Religion; which by reason of the different Fancies, Judgements, and Passions of severall men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 12, p. 54
Leviathan (1651)

Men, Fear, Religion, Nature

“The Treatise is also one of the most important books of Western thought ever written. Spinoza was the first to argue that the Bible is not literally the word of God but rather a work of human literature; that “true religion” has nothing to do with theology, liturgical ceremonies, or sectarian dogma but consists only in a simple moral rule: love your neighbor; and that ecclesiastic authorities should have no role whatsoever in the governance of a modern state.”

Steven Nadler (1958) American philosopher

Preface
A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise (2011)

Love, God, Books, Religion

“I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none — who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him — and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

“The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect.”

Avram Davidson book The Phoenix and the Mirror

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 10

“When the ceremony was over, I found The Bear and handed him my diploma along with a ballpoint pen. "What's this for, lamb?" "I want you to sign it, Colonel. I want you to make it official," I answered. "I wan the name of a man I can respect on my diploma, Colonel." He handed me back the diploma without signing it. "There already is, Bubba," he answered. "There already is."”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

And he pointed to my name.
Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 498

“I fly to Luxembourg on Berlusconi's usual twin engine, who accompanies us, glad to exhibit himself and exhibit his status in an international ceremony. The gold medal (but is it really gold?) is given to me by Gaston Thorn, head of the Luxembourg government. Berlusconi fills his notebook with addresses: of all the V. I. P.'s that he has met. He's a true climber that takes advantage of everything and throws nothing away.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Luxembourg, 23 may, from accounts with myself. [citation needed]
2000s - 2010s

Flying

“The tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the US is a wonderful allegory for new racism. Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That's how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.
The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically, they're for the pot. But the fortunate fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the World Trade Organisation - so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p12.htm given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004 Speeches

Life, Children, World, School

“I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life, Women, War, Age

“The lap back to the pits and the whole podium ceremony was just unbelievable. I think for sure this is the best day of my life. These pictures, these emotions, I will never forget. It is unbelievable. It is so much greater than you might think it is. It is great. Again, I can just say a big, big thank you to all the guys working in the team. I think they did a fantastic job. Who might have thought about that at the beginning of the season. We had a poor start but then it got better and better and in these conditions we can make a bit of a gap by staying longer on full throttle. It is great, fantastic. I am speechless.”

Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/9/8387.html FIA post-race press conference, September 14, 2008.
After his maiden win at Monza.
Sourced quotes

Life, Guy, Thinking, Forgetting

“The latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic institution, the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and chattel of the man… has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which he produces. But she still quite unmistakably remains his chattel in theory; for the habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 83

“The great majority of experimental psychologists relate to the tradition of their field in much the same way as physicists. Their look at the past might take the form of a review of the literature in a specific research area, and perhaps they would go so far as to take time off for celebrating a few icons on appropriate ceremonial occasions, but there is no room in their world for a reflective or critical history. They would gladly leave anything like that to the professional historians without any sense of having surrendered something that might have the slightest relevance to their own research interests. In the U. S. this attitude may be more widespread than elsewhere, and it is certainly accompanied by a growing tendency for the history of psychology to be taken up by historians rather than psychologists, but of course, the same attitudes are to be found wherever there are psychological laboratories.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 472

World, Way, History, Literature

“Poetry is a highly visible art in Ireland; in our rapidly secularised society, it has become a kind of erzatz religion, applying the elevated ceremonial language without the divisive doctrine.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Other Quotes

Religion, Art

“Under these circumstances, men lose sight of themselves and escape into the security of work or sociability or other forms of what Vidich and Bensman have called the “externalization of the self.” Vidich and Bensman sketch a troubling picture of such men: “What is left of the personality is the dulled, autonomic ritualization of behavior where … no disturbing interferences are allowed to enter into thought. … Personal and social life becomes barren, and the personal mechanics and daily routine of living become the end-all of existence. All types of activity whose operation is based upon an objective, external, automatic rhythm to which an individual can bend himself serve the function of enabling him to lose himself in an objective ceremony.””

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: Forced to be Free (1971), p. 69, quotation is from A. J. Vidich and J. Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society (New York), p. 315

Life, Men, Behavior, Personality

“Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i. e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans …
"Why did you do it?"
"To punish my tongue, for saying things it shouldn't have." Click.
"But surely it was only obeying orders?"
"It has to learn to be warier of its mistress. And it's also a symbol." Click.
"What of?"”

Tibor Fischer book The Thought Gang

"That changes from day to day. It's a multi-purpose symbol."
See wikipedia on Yaxchilan.
The Thought Gang (1994)

Pain, Learning, Change

“Raised an Army brat in a constantly changing scene, Kitsy has always been at ease in any company. While she enjoys formal affairs, she has such an air of informality that in her corner of the room ritual is soon dispensed with. Kitsy was much impressed with the wives of Vietnamese officials. If the Vietnamese men, she liked to say, were half as strong as their women, the country would have no problem. She enjoyed their sense of humor, their propensity for earthly jokes. When she had difficulty deciphering the mixture of languages and getting to the point, one or another of the ladies would take her aside and explain. Kitsy shares some of my lack of affinity for foreign languages; her attempts at French drew the same wry smiles as my attempts at Vietnamese. Kitsy's sense of humor has brightened many an occasion. At a ceremony unveiling my official superintendent's portrait at West Point, the master of ceremonies asked her to say a few words. "This is the second time I have seen Westy unveiled," said Kitsy. "The first time was on our wedding night."”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 263.

Women, Men, Smile, Problem

“Men and women are not virtuous by law. Law itself does not of itself create virtue, nor is it the foundation or fountain of love. Law should protect virtue, and law should protect the wife, if she has kept her contract, and the man, if he has fulfilled his. But the death of love is the end of marriage. Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Writings of Robert G. Ingersoll (1900), Dresden Edition, publishing house: C.P. Farrell, chapter: Is Divorce Wrong (1889), page 426 http://books.google.de/books?id=MOjuNv04TUcC&pg=PA426&lpg=PA426&dq=Love+is+natural.+Back+of+all+ceremony+burns+and+will+forever+burn+the+sacred+flame.+There+has+been+no+time+in+the+world's+history+when+that+torch+was+extinguished.+In+all+ages,+in+all+climes,+among+all+people,+there+has+been+true,+pure,+and+unselfish+love.&source=bl&ots=7Shzo7cSUF&sig=ZHs4Bs7Z_AvZF4UG-emVhGR2gTM&hl=de&sa=X&ei=6rP7UdGNI8iFtAbe64GIDw&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Love%20is%20natural.%20Back%20of%20all%20ceremony%20burns%20and%20will%20forever%20burn%20the%20sacred%20flame.%20There%20has%20been%20no%20time%20in%20the%20world's%20history%20when%20that%20torch%20was%20extinguished.%20In%20all%20ages%2C%20in%20all%20climes%2C%20among%20all%20people%2C%20there%20has%20been%20true%2C%20pure%2C%20and%20unselfish%20love.&f=false

Love, Death, Women, Men

“There is probably no cult in which ideals of pecuniary merit have not been called in to supplement the ideals of ceremonial adequacy that guide men's conception of what is right in the matter of sacred apparatus.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 125

Men

“This is a footnote to our gay-marriage discussion. A woman in India last week married a snake. And it was done at a traditional Hindu ceremony attended by 2,000 people. Now, I would like to ask the proponents of gay marriage, which after all violates traditions going back through all of human history, to now absolutely positively guarantee that the next movement is not going to be allowing people to marry their pet horse, dog or cat. And you know what? Given the anything-goes culture we live in, I don't think they can deliver that guarantee.”

Dan Henninger

Henninger, D. (Commentator). (2006, June 10). Journal Editorial Report. New York: Fox News Channel.

Marriage, People, Dogs, History

“He came, bringing with Him the knowledge that God is a Being of infinite goodness; that the service required of mankind is not a service of form or ceremony, but a service of obedience.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 62.

God, Knowledge

“Dear Jones.. [I] give you some account of.... the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. Alas, only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon; my poor father's death [Sept. 1829] proved a heavy blow upon me, and has been followed by others of the same dark kind.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter, London Feb. 1830, to his friend George Jones in Rome; as cited in 'The life of J.M.W. Turner', Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; https://ia801207.us.archive.org/18/items/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor.pdf Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 233 1821 - 1851

Death, God, Sadness, Travel

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base…. There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. That is what happened.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

March 17, 2008, allegedly misspeaking about her 1996 trip to Bosnia. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/24/eveningnews/main3964921.shtml Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Cars

“She envied Camille. Camille was a tramp, Mildred thought. And things were so much easier for a tramp. There was no conscience, no sense of loss, nothing but a wonderful, relaxed, stretching-cat selfishness. She could go to bed with anyone she wanted to and never see him again and have no feeling of loss or insecurity about it. That was the way Mildred thought it was with Camille. She wished she could be that way, and she knew she couldn't. Couldn't because of her mother. And the unbidden thought entered her mind—if her mother were only dead Mildred's life would be so much simpler. She could have a secret little place to live somewhere. Almost fiercely, she brushed the thought away. "What a foul thing to think," she said to herself ceremoniously. But it was a dream she often had.”

John Steinbeck book The Wayward Bus

Source: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 13. Mildred is the daughter of Elliot and Bernice Pritchard.

Life, Secret, Dreams, Way

“The study of every thing that stands connected with the death of Christ, whether it be in the types of the ceremonial law, the predictions of the prophets, the narratives of the Gospels, the doctrines of the epistles, or the sublime vision of the Apocalypse, this is the food of the soul, the manna from heaven, the bread of life. This is "meat indeed" and "drink indeed."”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 69.

Life, Death, Law, Food

“In the Mahabharata, the ceremony for the oath of a new king includes the admonition: 'Be like a garland-maker, O king, and not like a charcoal burner.' The garland symbolizes social coherence; it is a metaphor for dharmic diversity in which flowers of many colors and forms are strung harmoniously for the most pleasing effect. In contrast, the charcoal burner is a metaphor for the brute-force reduction of diversity into homogeneity, where diverse living substances are transformed into uniformly lifeless ashes.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Indra's Net

Indra's Net (2014)

Color, Flowers

“In high school the approaching graduation was stirring up excitement among the seniors. I didn't care much for any of it since I couldn't afford any of the mementoes or activities offered for completing the four years. I had not attended the prom or the senior trip, had not purchased a class ring or letterman's jacket or the yearbook—had not even taken my senior portrait—and I wasn't about to attend the ceremony we had been rehearsing all week.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

School

“A holy man will follow after purity of heart. He will dread all filthiness and uncleanness of spirit, and seek to avoid all things that might draw him into it. He knows his own heart is like tinder, and will diligently keep clear of the sparks of temptation. Who shall dare to talk of strength when David can fall? There is many a hint to be gleaned from the ceremonial law. Under it the man who only touched a bone or a dead body or a grave or a diseased person became at once unclean in the sight of God.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (first published 1879).

God, Disease, Law, Heart

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. Upon crossing the shadow line, it is more the desire to act than the power to do so that is lost. Is it possible, after fifty years of experiences and disappointments, to retain the ardent curiosity of youth, the desire to know and understand, the power to love wholeheartedly, the certainty that beauty, intelligence, and kindness unite naturally, and to preserve faith in the efficacy of reason? Beyond the shadow line lies the realm of even, tempered light where the eyes, not being dazzled any more by the blinding sun of desire, can see things and people as they are. How is it possible to believe in the moral perfection of pretty women if you have loved one of them? How is it possible to believe in progress when you have discovered throughout a long and difficult life that no violent change can triumph over human nature and that it is only the most ancient customs and ceremonies that can provide people with the flimsy shelter of civilization? "What's the use?" says the old man to himself. This is perhaps the most dangerous phrase he can utter, for after having said: "What's the use of struggling?" he will say one day: "What's the use of going out?" then: "What's the use of leaving my room?" then: "What's the use of leaving my bed?" and at last comes "What's the use of living?"”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

which opens the portals of death.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Life, Death, Women

“The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages.”

Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Epilogue
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

Life, Marriage, Communication, Birth

“Their beloved priest must now wander for all eternity chained to this earthly purgatory—a warning to all that God forgives only that which is confessed to Him through true repentance and atonement. I walked down the church steps, keeping my secret stitched to my tongue. After the ceremony I would have no one to answer for my yearnings but myself, even if after my death I would have to lag behind that priest until the end of days, a pair of branded souls dragging the heavy burdens of their sins, like cows roaming the foggiest dawns, the first guiding the second with its dangling rosary of a tail.”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

Death, God, Secret, Soul

“The great defect, for Chamfort, consisted in the public’s reluctance to submit its thinking to the rigors of rational examination, and its tendency to rely instead on intuition, emotion, and custom. “One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority,” the Frenchman observed, adding that what is flatteringly called common sense is usually little more than common nonsense, suffering as it does from simplification and illogicality, prejudice and shallowness: “The most absurd customs and the most ridiculous ceremonies are everywhere excused by an appeal to the phrase, but that’s the tradition.””

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety (2004), pp. 116-117.

Idea, Thinking, Sense, Suffering

“As I understand it, the benefits of multiculturalism are that the sterile white-bread cultures of Britain, Canada and Australia get some great ethnic restaurants and a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony that lasts until two in the morning. But in the case of those Muslim ghettoes — in Sydney, in Oslo, in Paris, Copenhagen and Manchester — multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture — the subjugation of women — combine with the worst attributes of Western culture — licence and self-gratification. Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall. Yet even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes — women's rights and gay rights — the political elite turns squeamishly away.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders (2002)

Women, Game, Understanding

“The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives converted to the so-called orthodox body of Christians. And, as every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this revealed olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the religion of Christ. Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her — namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VII

World, Religion, Color, Understanding

“There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Priestly Lie"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Women, Men, God, Age

“We forced our way onward slowly, and, as we reached the edge of the city, the sidewalks were lined on both sides of the streets with black and white alike all looking with curious, eager faces at the man who held their destiny in his hand; but there was no anger in anyone's face; the whole was like a gala day, and it looked as if the President was some expected guest who had come to receive great honors. Indeed, no man was ever accorded a greater ovation than was extended to him, be it from warm hearts or from simple ceremony.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 296

Way, Heart, Anger

“It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortunately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 40 “Meanwhile” (pp. 230-231)

“I was raised deeply imbued with my parents' atheism. The thought of really, seriously practicing any religion doesn't really work for me. But I feel at home in religious buildings and ceremonies. I still hang out a lot in Catholic churches in America. I like going to Catholic masses; I always go to Christmas and Easter. In India I always go to temples and to the pujas. But to be committed to the dogma of any religion-to be told what to believe-goes against my grain in some basic way.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her intent to practice Hinduism.
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Religion, Way, Feeling, Home

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues…. Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered? In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind… And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Love, God, Truth, Soul

“I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me—sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … and, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Books, World, Universe, Appearance

“Such commitment extends to the maintenance of the exclusive Jewish symbolism that Israel deploys, ranging from its Jewish flag and national anthem (which only speaks of Jews) to its ceremonial national days and the practices of institutionalized discrimination against its Arab non-Jewish citizens in every facet of life.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

Life

“A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910), Chapter 12.

Fools, Sense, Parting

“In much of precolonial Nigeria, and indeed Africa, ethnic nations organized people within communities into peer groups and trained them, from babyhood to old age, to serve their communities. When successful, this system provided all members of a community not only with a sense of belonging but also with a vehicle for helping to shape the community's direction and pace of change. In this system, people knew they were entitled to help resolve any issue that affected the community.
This sense of entitlement grows out of a series of rituals that begin the day a child is born. When a baby is born, after the first few seconds, it lets out a yelp, which announces its arrival, and which is met by expressions of joy. Among the Yoruba, the arrival is acknowledged with a naming ceremony where parents give names that express rich meaning and hopes for the baby. When I arrived, my parents named me Hafsat Olaronke, which means the treasured one and honor is being cared for. For my parents, they saw in me one who would be cherished and who would bring honor to her community. Many in other parts of the world are impressed when they discover my name's meanings, but the truth is that most African names have beautiful meanings.”

Hafsat Abiola (1974) Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist

Architects of Peace (2000)

People, Truth, Age, World

“Really," said the poet, without enthusiasm.
"Mm—you say 'Really,' young man?" said the secretary. "That is undeniably a rather peculiar reply. Might I ask what you mean by that word?"
"I mean that I'm such an insignificant poet that it isn't worthwhile getting me to compose a poem," said Ólafur Kárason modestly.
The secretary gave the poet a stern and searching look and finally said, "I no longer understand young people nowadays. It's as if nothing serious or important makes any impression on young people any longer. The modern craze seems to be to squander money needlessly if possible. But luckily it isn't possible. Even you, young man, who are said to have a poetic bent, yes, and some say you even possess a modicum of intelligence, you just say 'Really' when you're invited to take part in a ceremony which is destined to revolutionize the religious, scientific, and moral life of the nation.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Life, Money, People, Search

“According to the ritual of the Romish church, the bells were not only blessed and exorcised, but baptized as those above mentioned, and anointed with holy oil. After these ceremonies had passed it was believed that the evil spirits lurking in the air might be driven away by their sound.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 292
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bell ringing

Evil

“The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical.”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Modes of Salutation, and Amicable Ceremonies, Observed in Various Nations.
Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)

Lovers

“We are honored for research which is today referred to as the "Two Neutrino Experiment". How does one make this research comprehensible to ordinary people? In fact "The Two Neutrinos" sounds like an Italian dance team. How can we have our colleagues in chemistry, medicine, and especially in literature share with us, not the cleverness of our research, but the beauty of the intellectual edifice, of which our experiment is but one brick? This is a dilemma and an anguish for all scientists because the public understanding of science is no longer a luxury of cultural engagement, but it is an essential requirement for survival in our increasingly technological age: In this context, I believe this Nobel Ceremony with its awesome tradition and pomp has as one of its most important benefits; the public attention it draws to science and its practitioners.”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

Lederman's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1988 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1988/lederman-speech.html (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

People, Age, Beauty, Literature

“I am deeply honored, and genuinely humbled with my selection for Brigadier General. With this promotion, I embrace the opportunity to serve in positions of greater responsibility and to continue to lead the amazing Soldiers in the world’s premier Army. While the DoD position is that orientation is a private matter, participating with family in traditional ceremonies such as the promotion is both common and expected of a leader. I was grateful to be surrounded by my family, friends, and co-workers at this special event. Looking at the photos of Tracey’s joy as she pins the star on my shoulder is a memory that will imprint my heart forever. Her support keeps me Army Strong.”

Tammy Smith (1963) United States Army officer

Quoted on Out Serve Magazine, "Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith Makes Statemant" http://outservemag.com/2012/08/brig-gen-tammy-smith-makes-statement/, August 16, 2013.

World, Family, Photo, Star