quotations about ceremony
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
Timon of Athens
Only ceremony and the love of fate distinguish us from the beasts.
IAIN M. BANKS
Consider Phlebas
That, I think, is the power of ceremony. It marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine; the coffee to a prayer.
ROBIN WALL KIMMERER
Braiding Sweetgrass
The sauce to meat is ceremony;
Meeting were bare without it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Julius Caesar
Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.
PABLO NERUDA
Winter Garden
Ceremony. When we've lost that, we've lost everything, and are only wandering in the dark, like chickens or lambs waiting for eagles.
RICK BASS
The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness
Nothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
JONI MITCHELL
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem", Night Ride Home
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. GONZALEZ-CRUSSI
Notes of an Anatomist
Rituals are to ceremonies what myths are to mythology, that is ritualism is the mystique that draws forth from deep in the psychology and sociology of a people certain attitudes and potential actions, codifies and forms them and then imposes them on the people in the form of approved forms of behavior with certain mystical (sometimes religious) overtones which tend to make the actions all the more acceptable.
RAY B. BROWNE
"Ritual One", Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture
Ceremony is the smoke of friendship.
CHINESE PROVERB
What art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
It is not meet that the strong, free limbs of manhood should be fettered by the silken threads of ceremony.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Save me saviour save me save me again
I'll see you on the flipside
Ceremony is dead
VIOLENT SOHO
"No Shade"
Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Pyramids
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
A Preface to Paradise Lost
Then ceremony leads her bigots forth,
Prepared to fight for shadows of no worth,
While truths on which eternal things depend,
Find not, or hardly find a single friend.
WILLIAM COWPER
"Expostulation"
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
Amy Vanderbilt's New Complete Book of Etiquette
The purpose of any ceremony is to ... bridge the distance between our cosmos and us.
SHAWN WILSON
Research Is Ceremony
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.
AMY VANDERBILT
Amy Vanderbilt's New Complete Book of Etiquette