John Selden Quotes

Oh, yeah, I'm all about ritual.

People crown kings and queens at homecoming parades all the time. We do a lot of things in our society that are simply symbolic.

Rituals are important.

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.

Truth and ceremony are two things.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

I enjoy ritual and ceremony. What I don't like is when it's badly done or sloppily done. This is actually a theological issue - the forms we adopt, the actions we take, the way we do things, are, as it were, a sacrament.

We lack rituals in this modern world.

I do love the idea of ritual.

I know now what this meant, that the bison were the gift of a good spirit and were our strength, but we should lose them, and from the same good spirit we must find another strength.

I believe in rituals.

I believe in ceremony. I think ceremony is important, pomp and circumstance, tradition. I'm into those things.

Ageless ritual is very good.

Breaking a glass in the northwest is rather like belching in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation.

Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored.

Ceremonies are the outworks of manners.

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

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

To me, I like and understand ritual and I think it is important. Things that we do that give us comfort are important. Like Christmas, I like to go into a church and hear the carols sung. There's a comfort of actually going inside of a church, I find them serene. They're unchanging.

Funerals are all abstract ceremony.

As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.

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.

One must observe the proper rites.

No doubt they rose up early to observe the rite of May; and, hearing our intent, Came here in grace of our solemnity.

Religion is more than rite and ritual.