Quotes about Ritual

It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.

It has not only detested beauty when produced at the price of justice; it has rejected the ritual when performed by the morally corrupted. Even religion itself, worship, was not considered to be an absolute. "Your prayers are an abomination," said Isaiah to the exploiters of the poor. Stay away from the synagogue, wrote the Gaon of Wilna to his household, if you cannot abstain from envy and gossiping about the dresses of your fellow attendants.

I remember the day of my baptism very vividly. I was baptized in the baptismal font in the Tabernacle on Temple Square. Those who were being baptized put on white coveralls, and one by one were gently taken down the steps into the water.

This is criterion by which the Church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine or ritual, but by the reality of the reality of the love which it manifests.

Baptism is the door of the spiritual life and the gateway to the sacraments.

Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time.

The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth.

I derived my strength from daily mass and communion.

Tonight the special was chicken pot pie, but most of the regulars were concentrating on whiskey.

There is no occasion when meals should become totally unimportant. Meals can be very small indeed, very inexpensive, short times taken in the midst of a big push of work, but they should be always more than just food.

Something old, something new,Something borrowed, something blue,And a lucky sixpence in her shoe.

Give me that old-time religion,It's good enough for me.