A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.
Marshall McLuhan

A person is born with desires of the eyes and ears, and a liking for beautiful sights and sounds. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to immorality and lack of restriction, and any ritual principles and propriety will be abandoned.
Xun Zi

But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches.
William Robertson Smith

But, you know, they don't enjoy the dinner hour together. It's just not as much of a ritual at night and it's interesting. I think the ritual is taking place perhaps more in the morning.
Katie Couric

Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin.
William Robertson Smith

Feeding is a very important ritual for me. I don't trust people who don't like to eat.
Gina Gershon

For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church.
Maggie Gallagher

I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.
Kelly Jones

I had this whole ritual with my mother making the bed with me inside it so I would be invisible.
Ahmet Zappa

I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.
Kiefer Sutherland

I love to cook comfort food. I'll make fish and vegetables or meat and vegetables and potatoes or rice. The ritual of it is fun for me, and the creativity of it.
Reese Witherspoon

I loved the atmosphere of the dance studios - the wooden floors, the big mirrors, everyone dressed in pink or black tights, the musicians accompanying us - and the feeling of ritual the classes had.
Suzanne Vega

I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.
Brian Ferneyhough

I wasn't losing my focus but I was getting tired of focusing. What I was focusing on was becoming too routine, too ritual, not something that was interesting, new and exciting.
Picabo Street

In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.
William Robertson Smith

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

It is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day.
Brad Henry

Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it.
Camille Paglia

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.
Siobhan Fahey

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.
Augusten Burroughs