Ritual Quotes

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?

Muriel Barbery

We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.

Amy Vanderbilt

A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.

E. M. Forster

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

Derek Walcott

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

C.S. Lewis

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

G. K. Chesterton

If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.

Paulo Coelho

When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row.

Alice Paul

Ceremony was but devised at first to set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, recanting goodness, sorry ere 'Tis shown; but where there is true friendship, there needs none.

William Shakespeare

It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.

Blaise Pascal

Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. Anyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.

George Gurdjieff

Ceremony is the smoke of friendship.

Chinese Proverb

Ceremony and ritual spring from our heart of hearts: those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

F. GonzalezCrussi