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Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.
Sep 10, 2025
The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.
A methodology's weight is a product of its size and ceremony.
I believe in ceremony. I think ceremony is important, pomp and circumstance, tradition. I'm into those things.
An outward observance without any real inward meaning is only a ceremony.
When you watch a tea ceremony, every single movement, every single gesture is very calculated. It's very precise, and it's all protocol. It's all a part of the system. And it's almost like they've sacrificed every single thing to make that perfect. It's like their craft.
So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you're comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what's a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.
Effective metaphor does more than shed light on the two things being compared. It actually brings to the mind's eye something that has never before been seen. It's not just the marriage ceremony linking two things; it's the child born from the union.
It is merely the egoism of the man, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love.
It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself, without ceremony or restraint.
The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests ... By devices of this kind true religion has been banished, and such means have been found out to extract money, even from the pockets of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief.
I think it is very important to know that we are going to die. Now we refuse the fact of dying. There was once serenity in dying where you had all your children around you in a ceremony and would utter your last words with something like, 'I love the sky'.
For as long as we can trace back human life, there's always been some sort of music - ceremonies, rituals. It's part of the human makeup.
A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other... until death do them join.
I don't want a Jennifer Lopez wedding or anything like that. A commitment ceremony would be a nice thing to do.
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever.
On a certain day, month and year one should observe the ceremony of tree-planting. Thus, one fulfils one's responsibilities, serves one's fellow-beings which not only brings happiness but benefits all.
I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things-or who doesn't win them-you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is.
I do love the ceremony of putting on a record but I don't have space for a vinyl collection.
Personal relationship with God is not all just the ceremony and not the religion of doing something because you were told that's what you have to do; it's relationships, it's like we have relationships with our families, with our friends, with our loved ones.
For most of my life the only ceremonies I've been to at which women were the stars were weddings. So I like weddings.
When a man and a woman love one another that is enough. That is marriage. A religious rite is superfluous. And if the man and woman live together without the love, no ceremony in the world can make it a marriage.
The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.
People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.
If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.
The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony.
Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.
All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Mannersand Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.
A certain degree of ceremony is a necessary outwork of manners, as well as of religion; it keeps the forward and petulant at a proper distance, and is a very small restraint to the sensible and to the well-bred part of the world.
Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.
The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies.
Ceremony is-really a protection, too, in times of emotional involvement, particularly at death. If we have a social formula to guide us and do not have to extemporize, we feel better able to handle life.
Gangs have always existed - they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture.
It should come as no surprise to readers of the MAPS Bulletin that psychedelic plants are used as a sacrament by many native cultures all over the world. It may not be so obvious that these same plants are often incorporated into the coming-of-age ceremonies of these various societies.
Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger … since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery …would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home.
So you can see what is happening in the New Testament. Worship is being significantly deinstitutionalized, delocalized, de-externalized. The whole thrust is being taken off of ceremony and seasons and places and forms and is being shifted to what is happening in the heart - not just on Sunday but every day and all the time in all of life.
CEREMONY OF FLIES hits the road like a nitrous-fueled GTO...and then pulls the ultimate stunt of getting better. What starts as a deceptively simple hard-boiled noir story twists on itself and adds layers and grows stranger and before you know it, BAM - it's the end of the world and all you can do is hang on by your fingernails. This really, truly is one of the best novellas I've read in years.
I hate the word 'production'...it's a ceremony, it's a ritual...you should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in.
Higher education is the only business that has a ceremony for firing its customers.
Life in the world... was nothing more than a system of atavistic contracts, banal ceremonies, preordained words, with which people entertained each other in society in order not to commit murder. The dominant sign in that paradise of provincial frivolity was fear of the unknown.
Layla brought her arms around herself, no doubt because she was remembering the feel of another, stronger set. "I have wanted to, but he holds back. I hope...I believe it is because he wishes to mate me properly first, in ceremony." Payne felt the awful weight of premonition. "Beware, sister. You are a gentle soul." Layla got to her feet, her smile now saddened. "Yes, I am. But I would rather my heart be broken than unopened and I know that one must ask if one is to receive.
It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible
When I got married for the third time, and I had children from my other marriage there, that's what I said when it came time in the ceremony for me to say something. I said, "I'm grateful to everybody that participated, everybody that participated in my life that got me to this moment. And everything was dead-right because everything is right now."
How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?
For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
In undeveloped social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training. Savage groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the young upon the same sort of association which keeps adults loyal to their group. They have no special devices, material, or institutions for teaching save in connection with initiation ceremonies by which the youth are inducted into full social membership. For the most part, they depend upon children learning the customs of the adults, acquiring their emotional set and stock of ideas, by sharing in what the elders are doing.
An emcee is a Master of Ceremonies. If you're an emcee, and I am an emcee... I rhyme, you know what I mean? I do things for my fans that still appreciate me, let them know what's coming.
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.
Every person must live the inner life in one form or another. Consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, the inner world will claim us and exact its dues. If we go to that realm consciously, it is by our inner work: our prayers, meditations, dream work, ceremonies, and Active Imagination. If we try to ignore the inner world, as most of us do, the unconscious will find its way into our lives through pathology: our psychosomatic symptoms, compulsions, depressions, and neuroses.