"Ritual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religious reform rather than religious revolution, a simplification of doctrine rather than any radical change in it, the purification of worship rather than the introduction of any wholly new ritual. Their theology remained, as they believed, a Catholic theology, but a theology cleared of the superstitious growths which obscured the true Catholicism of the early Church. In a word their dream was the dream of Erasmus and Colet. The spirit of Erasmus was seen in the Articles of religion which ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... mechanically preparing her husband's meal. At the precise minute of year-long habit he came. To her anxious eye his stern face seemed more pallid than usual, but it revealed nothing. He washed his hands in ritual silence, made the blessing, and drew chair to table. A hundred times the question hovered about Rachel's lips, but it was not till near the end of the meal that she ventured to say, "Our son is back. Hast ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lasted on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though losing the higher sentiment which inspired it—the coronation of the poets with the laurel wreath. The origin of this system in the Middle Ages is obscure, and the ritual of the ceremony never became fixed. It was a public demonstration, an outward and visible expression of literary enthusiasm, and naturally its form was variable. Dante, for instance, seems to have understood it in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Mont-Cassin and Ferriare, and by the clergy of France assembled at Mélun in 1579. A great number of rituals specify the means to be employed as counter-charms to the sorceries of the point-tiers; and the Cardinal Cu Perron,[65] a very able and experienced prelate, has inserted in the ritual of Evreux very sage directions for this purpose. Similar precautions may be found in the synodal statues of Lyons, Tours, Sens, Narbonne, Bourges, Troyes, Orléans, and many other celebrated churches. St. Augustine, St. Thomas and Peter Lombard positively recognise the power of point-tying ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"—family honoured pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest worshippers should, for the disclosure of ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... it almost had him by the nape. Mr. Budd was late; and for five immeasurable minutes Lethbury and Jane faced a churchful of conjecture. Then the bridegroom appeared, flushed but chivalrous, and explaining to his father-in-law under cover of the ritual that he had torn his glove and had to ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... man. Judaism took over as one indivisible body of sacred teachings both the early and the later literature in which these varying conceptions of God were enshrined; the Law was accepted as the guiding rule of life, the ritual of ceremony and sacrifice was treasured as a holy memory, and as a memory not contradictory of the prophetic exaltation of inward religion but as consistent with that exaltation, as interpreting it, as but another aspect of Micah's enunciation of ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... kind were distasteful, those of a circle in which, as in that of George Sand, democratic and socialistic, theistic and atheistic views prevailed, were particularly so. For, notwithstanding his bourgeois birth, his sympathies were with the aristocracy; and notwithstanding his neglect of ritual observances, his attachment to the Church of Rome remained unbroken. Chopin does not seem to have concealed his dislike to George Sand's circle; if he did not give audible expression to it, he made it sufficiently manifest by seeking other company. That she was aware ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... very fast, with the priest turning, bowing his head, spreading out his arms, making all the ritual gestures in haste while casting sidelong glances at the group. Gervaise and Coupeau, before the altar, were embarrassed, not knowing when they should kneel or rise or seat themselves, expecting some indication from ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the transfigured scene it did not seem exactly like a bonfire or any ritual illumination. It was too chaotic, and too close to the houses of the town. All one side of a cottage was painted pink with the giant brush of flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... is properly a chorus of sacred singers and dancers, living in a community, like a college of dervishes, who, indeed, are an exact counterpart of the Galli as regards their howling and dancing ritual, but have the advantage of their predecessors in one important particular, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... especially attired, nor did they march in to music but visited along the way as they came straggling in. Soon the groom shuffled in, I say shuffled because they have so recently begun to wear shoes. The bridal group gathered before the altar and listened to the ritual. Finally the groom took the bride's hand for one brief moment. A few more words by the priest and the ceremony was ended. To my surprise the bride came up and greeted me. I did not understand what I was expected to do but I shook hands and said I hoped she would be very happy. The groom ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... borne beneath that arch which sustains the precious relics of Grecian art, and deposited in the nave. Candles glimmered before the altar and around the ghastly person of the dead, throughout the night; and the cathedral of St. Mark was pregnant with all the imposing ceremonials of the Catholic ritual, until the day ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... encourage any feeling, incompatible with regard and kindness, towards the conscientious defenders of her creed. From his boyhood he has lived on terms of friendly intercourse and intimacy with individuals among her laity and of her priesthood. In his theological pursuits, he has often studied her ritual, consulted her commentators, and perused the homilies of her divines; and, withal, he has mourned over her errors and misdoings, as he would have sighed over the faults of a friend, who, with many good qualities still to endear him, had unhappily swerved from the straight ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... forged bond, a stockade. This latter condition had been the result of allowing the church to interfere unwarrantedly in what was not its affair. Religion had calmly usurped this, the most potent of the motives of humanity; or, rather, it had fastened to it the ludicrous train of ritual. That laughable idea that God had a separate scrutinizing eye, like the eye of a ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... knew then, for he was beginning the ritual of the man or woman who accuses a partner, before the tribe, of unfaithfulness. He was using the most puro Romany jib, for only so can the serious affairs of the tribe tribunal be conducted. Dora Parse struggled in the strong hands ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... in Rome than in the Anglican Church. The Apostolical Succession, the two prominent sacraments, and the primitive Creeds, belonged, indeed, to the latter; but there had been and was far less strictness on matters of dogma and ritual in the Anglican system than in the Roman: in consequence, my main argument for the Anglican claims lay in the positive and special charges, which I could bring against Rome. I had no positive Anglican theory. I was very nearly a pure Protestant. Lutherans ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... down. The most dangerous point in the present state of France is that of religion. It is, no doubt, excellent in the Bourbons to desire to make France a religious country; but they begin, I think, at the wrong end. To press the observances and ritual of religion on those who are not influenced by its doctrines is planting the growing tree with its head downwards. Rites are sanctified by belief; but belief can never arise out of an enforced observance of ceremonies; it only makes men detest what is imposed on ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... function at the present moment; that there is a living cultus of Lucifer; that Black Masses are celebrated, and involve revolting profanations of the Catholic Eucharist; that the devil appears personally; that he possesses his church, his ritual, his sacraments; that men, women, and children dedicate themselves to his service, or are so devoted by their sponsors; that there are people, assumed to be sane, who would die in the peace of Lucifer; that there are ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... had been able to do so, had knelt upon the seats, whilst the others joined their hands, or repeatedly made the sign of the cross; and when the murmured prayers were followed by the Litanies of the ritual, every voice rose, an ardent desire for the remission of the man's sins and for his physical and spiritual cure winging its flight heavenward with each successive Kyrie eleison. Might his whole life, of which they knew nought, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... saw skies in books, and books in skies, and in every orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses something of 'the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... way—blatantly and without knowledge—of the virtues of the dead. In a chair at the side of the coffin the bereaved husband, in new black clothes, wept audibly. The baldheaded, officious undertaker kept moving nervously about, intent upon the ritual of his trade. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... attractive to the eye. He lighted candles, and then a lamp with a gay piece of red flannel in its glass body, put there by Mary Nellen, who, though on Homeric knowledge bent, kept religiously all the ritual of home. The colonel's slippered step was coming down the stairs. Jeffrey went out into the hall and beckoned. He looked stealth and mischief, and the colonel grimaced wisely at him. They went into the kitchen and sat down to their meal like ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the great craving need outside and the boon offered it within! Here and there, indeed, a patch of bright coloured success, as it claimed to be, where the primitive tendency of man towards the organised excitement of religious ritual, visible in all nations and civilisations, had been appealed to with more energy and more results than usual. But in general, blank failure, or rather obvious want of success—as the devoted men now beating the void there were themselves the first ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conversation was abruptly interrupted by a rhythmic, snarling chant from the vast horde of rat-men in the cavern above. The chant rose and fell in a rude cadence that was suggestively ritual ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... by Chuang Tzu, in the light of which all things became one, paved the way for One Concrete Ruler of the universe; and the dazzling centre, far away in space, became the heaven which was to be the resting-place of virtuous mortals after death. Then came Buddhism, with its attractive ritual and its manifold consolations, and put an end once for all to the ancient glories of the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... carried to such excess as at Edwin's. Her unconquerable instinct, upon opening the front door to a well-dressed stranger, was to rush off and publish the news that somebody mysterious and grand had come, leaving the noble visitor on the door-mat. She had been instructed in the ritual proper to these crises, but with little good result, for the crises took ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Clustered about a sort of altar, which they had not noticed before, was a group of the cliff-dwellers who seemed to be deeply interested in something that was going forward. A loud sound of chanting and intoning of what seemed to be a solemn ritual was the first inkling the boys had of ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Biddy was a kindly humbug. He knew that if he didn't now get rid of her Roscarna would become nothing more than a warren in which her innumerable relatives might swarm. He purged Roscarna of Joyces, Biddy included. He buried Jocelyn decently according to the ritual of the Church of Ireland, and proceeded to put his wife's estate in order as soon as her father's remains ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit and work and stand and strain and say 'yes,' and pretend stiffly that she was a sound, serviceable, thick-skinned imitation man among men! If Hilda had been ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Arabs, who pitch their tents on the banks of the Jordan and along the edge of the desert of Ansarich, worshippers of the sun, the descendants of the servants of the Old Man of the Mountain of Maronites, who profess the Catholic ritual; of Druses, whose creed is doubtful; of all the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon; of Mebualis, Mussulmans of the sect of Ali; of Naplonsins and other tribes who have preserved a state of independence. We shall not be astonished to know that amidst this prodigious diversity ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... Dardanelles to the Bosporous, stopped overnight at Istanbul and then turned around and went back. On the way in, it had stopped at Gibraltar, Barcelona, Marseilles, Genoa, Naples, and Athens—the main friendly ports on the northern side of the Mediterranean. On the way back, it performed the same ritual on the African side of the sea. Its most famous passengers were the American Secretary of State, two senators, and ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... clinging wet garments of Calypso, and swim to the land of the Phaeacians. Then she hands him the veil which he is to "bind beneath his breast," and, when he has reached land, he is to throw it back into the sea. A ritual of some kind, symbolic acts we feel these to be, though their exact meaning may be doubtful. Ino, "the daughter of Cadmus," is supposed to have been a Phoenician Goddess originally, and to have been transferred to the Greek sailor, just as his navigation came to him, partly at least, from the Phoenicians. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... nowhere find any of those characteristics of the Greek Illumination which I have pointed out are the necessary concomitants of the rise of historical criticism. The conservative respect for tradition which made the Roman people delight in the ritual and formulas of law, and is as apparent in their politics as in their religion, was fatal to any rise of that spirit of revolt against authority the importance of which, as a factor in intellectual ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the first words, you accuse my client of mingling the sacred with the profane; when he has been content to translate the beautiful formulas of extreme unction, at the moment when the priest touches the organs of sense, at the moment where, according to the ritual, he says: Per istam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... There will be no more the worship of any one instinct or organ, or any external object or agent. How could Carpenter have so far forgotten his own definition of health as to applaud the primitive ritualistic worship of the glories of the human body and the procession of the stars? That ritual was itself the symptom of the break-up of man's character into multiplicity, and the insubordination of specific organs. Surely when man has gained centrality of health, he will worship the unifying will which is dominant whenever health prevails. He will adore the spirit which makes the ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... with all the details of the ceremonial law. Certainly better to be familiar with the Apostles' Creed, than to know all about the building of the Temple. Better be able to repeat and understand the Lord's Prayer, than to have a clear knowledge of the elaborate ritual of the Temple service. Better understand the meaning of Christ's two Sacraments than to be able to tell all about the great ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... leaving his club the idea of theatres or calls had set his teeth on edge. He longed to be alone, to weigh in the silence of his heart the utter futility of life. Religion had never been a part of his training as the only son of a millionnaire, and if he preferred the Roman Catholic ritual above all others, it was because the appeal was to his aesthetic sense; a Turkish mosque, he assured his friends, produced the same soothing impression—gauze veils gently waving and slowly obscuring the dulling realities of everyday existence. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... thousand seamen as His Royal Highness entered the hall must have been a relief after the heavy and sustained etiquette of the past few days. Following this was the laying of the foundation stone of the Elphinstone Docks with Masonic ritual and ceremonies. Then came a visit to the Hyderabad Prime Minister and deputation and to others and a busy day closed with the usual state dinner and reception. On the evening of November 12th the famous Caves of Elephanta were ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Kalisch says: "The whole ritual of the Phoenician Goddess Astarte with whom that Queen of Heaven is identical, and who was the goddess of fertility seems to ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Often-times, but not always, it is wise and long-sighted policy to presume in nations higher qualities than they have, and developments beyond what really exist. But as to religion, there can be no doubt, and no debate at all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody abominations of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step to any serious improvement of the Kandyan people: it is the conditio sine qua non of all regeneration for this demoralized race. And what we ought to have promised, all that in mere civil equity we had the right to promise; was—that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... miniature of the State, and every father in Al-Islam was made priest and pontiff in his own house, able unaided to marry himself, to circumcise (to baptise as it were) his children, to instruct them in the law and canonically to bury himself (vol. viii. 22). Ritual, properly so called, there was none; congregational prayers were merely those of the individual en masse, and the only admitted approach to a sacerdotal order were the Olema or scholars learned in the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... holy oil, and the ritual for casting out demons, bearing a piece of the true cross, before which no evil being can prevail, we rode away at so rough a pace withal, through constant urging and imprecations of the men at arms, as caused us to ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... existence the survival of the soul was possible, even its return into manifested, physical life; of the astrology, or influence of the heavenly bodies upon all sublunar activities; of terrific forms of other life, known to the ancient worship of Atlantis, great Potencies that might be invoked by ritual and ceremonial, and of their lesser influence as recognised in certain lower forms, hence treated with veneration as the "Sacred Animal" branch of this dim religion. And she spoke lightly of the modern learning which so glibly imagined it was the animals themselves that were looked upon ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... question. Calvin insisted that leavened bread should be used for the communion, and that all feasts should be abolished except Sundays. These innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to conform to the ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political opponents used this disobedience to drive them from Geneva, whence they were, in fact, banished for several years. Later Calvin returned triumphantly at the demand of his flock. Such persecutions always become in the end the consecration ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Liturgy of St. John,[2] the Liturgy of St. Mark, and others. A National Church is within her rights when she compiles a Liturgy for National Use, provided that it is in harmony with the basic Liturgies of the Undivided Church. She has {41} as much right to her local "Use," with its rules and ritual, as a local post office has to its own local regulations, provided it does not infringe any universal rule of the General Post Office. For example, a National Church has a perfect right to say in what ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... Enoch and Elijah, in incorruptible bodies. But in reality as a penance for disobedience, all men, with these two exceptions, had suffered death, and been exiled to the gloomy caverns of Sheol. The Mosaic ritual was powerless to free men from this repulsive doom, but it had nevertheless served a good purpose in keeping men's minds directed toward holiness, preparing them, as a schoolmaster would prepare his pupils, to receive the vitalizing truths of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the shocking spectacle—the curious will find a contemporary account in the Appendix—but one characteristic detail may be mentioned. As she was climbing the fatal ladder, covered, for the occasion, with black cloth, she stopped, and addressing the celebrants of that grim ritual, "Gentlemen," said she, "do not hang me high, for the sake ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Ormuzd pass on the torch of their day to their successors who were Greeks and Romans. The Eleusinian mysteries, which at a later time were associated with a considerable amount of sensual, closely guarded ritual, were, in the Greek period, celebrated in the temple of Ceres in Eleusis. The origin of these sacred mysteries is lost in the shadow of profound antiquity. We know, only, that they were in the safekeeping of many generations of priests who jealously guarded them from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... SWEENEY suddenly comes upon Father DEAN conversing with SMYTHE, the sexton, and Mr. BUMSTEAD. Bowing to these three, who, like himself, seem to find real luxury in open-air strolling on a bitter night in midwinter, he notices that his model, the Ritual Rector, is wearing a new hat, like Cardinal's, only black, and is immediately lost in wondering where he can obtain one like ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... An I live, Grandson, to bless thy grandchild, I'll forget Never that youth and what he did for Prague. Aye, aye, I know! he slurred a certain verse In such and such a prayer; omitted quite To stand erect there where the ritual Commands us rise and bow towards the East; Therefore, the ingrates brand him heterodox, Neglect his memory whose virtue saved Each knave of us alive. Not I forget, No more does God, who wrought a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... divine origin, and I bowed to the crudest manifestations of his genius in these kinds as if they were revelations not to be doubted without sacrilege. But in certain small matters, as it were of ritual, I suffered myself to think, and I remember boldly speaking my mind about his style, which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... observe these days as days of rest, though they seem to have marked them in the ritual of temple and court. Nor did they make every seventh or every fifth a rest-day, for Prof. Schiaparelli has specially examined these documents to see if they gave any evidence of abstention from business either on one day in seven or on one day ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... El-Khulusah, El-Khulsah, or Zu'l-Khalasah, consult the art. "Midian," Smith's "Dict. of the Bible," by E. S. Poole, vol. ii. p. 356. For the Khalasah of the Negeb, "where Venus was worshipped with all the licentious pomp of the Pagan ritual," see Professor Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," p. 385. The text, however, alludes to a ruin called El-Khulasah, one march from El-Muwaylah to ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... dust be hurled That dull, punctilious god, whom they That call their tiny clan the world, Serve and obsequiously obey: Who con their ritual of Routine, With minds to one dead likeness blent, And never ev'n in dreams have seen The ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Against whom does he rage? What Church is it whose sacred vessels, lamps, and ornaments he is pillaging, whose ritual he overthrows? Whose golden patens and silver chalices, sumptuous votive offerings and rich treasure, does he envy? Why, the man is a Lutheran all over. With what other cloak did our Nimrods[4] cover their brigandage, when they embezzled the money of their Churches and wasted the ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... of swine, which has formed an item in the dietetic ritual of the Egyptians, the Hebrews, and Mahometans, has been defended in all ages, from Manetho and Herodotus downwards, on the ground that the flesh of an animal so foully fed has a tendency to promote cutaneous disorders, a belief which, though held as a fallacy in northern ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... except my father—he was away in the little Synagogue at which he was cantor. Ah, such a voice he had—a voice of tears and thunder—when he prayed it was like a wounded soul beating at the gates of Heaven—but he sang even more beautifully in the ritual of home, and how we were looking forward to his hymns at the Passover table—— [He breaks down. The BARON has gradually turned round under the spell of DAVID'S story and now listens hypnotised.] I was playing my cracked little fiddle. Little Miriam ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... the assembly of his long-time sway Is near his last, and themes to-night launched forth Will take a tincture from that memory, When me recall the scene and circumstance That hung about his pleadings.—But no more; The ritual of each party is rehearsed, Dislodging not one vote or prejudice; The ministers their ministries retain, And Ins as Ins, and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... domestic functions, admit of the conclusion, that these figures of gods embody the essential part of the religious conceptions of the Maya peoples in a tolerably complete form. For here we have the entire ritual year, the whole chronology with its mythological relations and all accessories. In addition to this, essentially the same figures recur in all three manuscripts. Their number is not especially large. There are about fifteen figures of gods in human form and about half as many in animal form. At ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... of fonts and their origin had qualified him in this particular subject. Fully conscious of the inexpediency of contests on minor ritual differences, he yet felt a sudden impulse towards a mild intellectual tournament with the eager old man—purely as an exercise of his wits in the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... adduce the broad principle which should shape the Pharisees' relation to them, as it had shaped His. Hosea had said long ago that God delighted more in 'mercy' than in 'sacrifice.' Kindly helpfulness to men is better worship than exact performance of any ritual. Sacrifice propitiates God, but mercy imitates Him, and imitation is the perfection of divine service. Jesus here speaks as all the prophets had spoken, and smites with a deadly stroke the mechanical formalism which in every age stiffens religion into ceremonies and neglects love towards God, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and wine by priest or bishop, its miraculous transformation (transubstantiation) at his word into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and its reception by the faithful. It was around the eucharist that the elaborate ritual and ceremonies of the Mass developed, that fine vestments and candles and incense and flowers were used, and that magnificent cathedrals were erected. Extreme unction was the anointing at the hands of a priest of the Christian who was in immediate danger of death, and it was supposed to give ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a flurry of action, and two of the dancers stumbled and collapsed, their partner-opponents whirling away to pair off again, describe the elaborate pre-combat ritual, and abruptly set to, dulled sabres clashing—and two more Yill were down, stunned. It ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... bowed in reverent homage before the Christ. From some marginal notes he has made on Froude's essay on Newman's "Grammar of Assent," I take these quotations: "After all, what matter what our dogmas if we really follow the example of great teachers like Christ, who had nothing to do with creeds or ritual?" "Every man should be his own priest." The Sermon on the Mount was his religion. One of his favourite Scriptural texts was the familiar one from the Epistle of St. James (i, 27): "Pure religion and undefiled before God and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... written down for the new servant upon a sheet of paper the entire routine of Kant's daily life, down to the minutest and most trivial circumstances; all which he mastered with the greatest rapidity. To make sure, however, we went through a rehearsal of the whole ritual; he performing the manoeuvres, I looking on and giving the word. Still I felt uneasy at the idea of his being left entirely to his own discretion on his first debut in good earnest, and therefore I made a ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... to be all the religious ritual Khinjan remembered or could tolerate. Considering that the mullah, too, must have killed his man in cold blood before earning the right to be there, perhaps it was enough—too much. There were men not far from King ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... so fervent a defender of the faith, so punctilious in all observances, so constant at the altar rail; none so versed in rubrics, ritual, and canon law; none had such a knowledge of the Church fathers. Mr. Atterbury delighted to discuss them with the rector at the dinner parties where they met; none was more zealous for foreign missions. He was the treasurer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sistrum, beats the tambourine to dispel evil spirits, or holds the libation vase or bouquet. The eldest son carries the net or lassoes the bull, and recites the prayer while his father successively presents to the god each object prescribed by the ritual. A priest may occasionally act as substitute for the prince, but other men perform only the most menial offices. They are slaughterers or servants, or they bear the boat or canopy of the god. The god, for his part, is not always alone. He has his wife and ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... the instinctive doctrine that there is something holy and mystic in sex, a doctrine which many of us now easily dissociate from any priestly ceremony, but which in those days seemed to all who felt it to need a ritual affirmation, could not be thrown on the scrap-heap with the sale of Indulgences and the like; and so the Reformation left marriage where it was: a curious mixture of commercial sex slavery, early Christian sex abhorrence, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... did CLEOPATRA WOO Her vanquished victor, couched on scented roses, And PHARAOH from his throne With more imperious tone Addressed in some such terms rebellious MOSES; And esoteric priests in Theban shrines, Their ritual conned from hieroglyphic signs, Thus muttered incantations dark and deep To Isis and Osiris, Thoth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... up his hand and head stiffly, like a dog pointing. "Number 4"—and Number 4 gun hurled out fire and filmy smoke, then leaped back, half frightened at its own fury, half anxious to get a better view of what it had done. It was a little over. "Nineteen hundred," cried the major. Same ritual, only a little short. "Nineteen fifty"—and it was just right. Therewith field and mountain guns, yard by yard, up and down, right and left, carefully, methodically, though roughly, sowed the whole of Matawana's ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... manifests a particular reverence for these rests of antiquity which he has sought out. It is both in a religious and in a poetic spirit that he considers The Road as a symbol of humanity. He writes in a grave and ritual tone: ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... most popular young man of the neighborhood. The rudiments of a classical education gained at a reputable academy in Sackville had not detracted from his qualities as a healthy, rollicking young farmer. The lodge had an imposing ritual of which I well remember one feature. At stated intervals a password which admitted a member of any one lodge to a meeting of any other was received from the central authority—in Maine, I believe. It was never to be pronounced except to secure admission, and was communicated to the members by being ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... that his cyclic labor, and a warrior who is invincible fights for him and he draws upon divine powers. Let us but get that way of looking at things which we call imaginative, and how everything alters. For our attitude to man and to nature, expressed or not, has something of the effect of ritual, of evocation. As our aspiration so is our inspiration. We believe in life universal, in a brotherhood which links the elements to man, and makes the glow-worm feel far off something of the rapture of the seraph hosts. Then we ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... mediocrity. They have embodied so exquisitely the universal language of religious emotion, that (a few fierce and vindictive passages excepted, natural in the warrior-poet of a sterner age,) they have entered with unquestioned propriety into the ritual of the holier and more perfect religion of Christ. The songs which cheered the solitude of the desert caves of Engedi, or resounded from the voice of the Hebrew people as they wound along the glens or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... great temple are magnificent, and to one of these we are now invited. At the sound of the gong they make their entrance before the idols with a stately ritual; twenty or thirty priests officiate in gala costumes, with genuflections, clapping of hands and movements to and fro, which look like the figures ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... rest of the gifted amateurs to sink into comparative insignificance. At present Lucia was high-priestess at every altar of Art, and she could not think with equanimity of seeing anybody in charge of the ritual at any. Again to so eminent an opera-singer there must be conceded a certain dramatic knowledge, and indeed Georgie had often spoken to Lucia of that superb moment when Brunnhilde woke and hailed the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... those more decadent days of my childhood did I admire the man as a stylist. Even then I was angry that he should treat English as a dead language, bored by that sedulous ritual wherewith he laid out every sentence as in a shroud—hanging, like a widower, long over its marmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length in his book, its sepulchre. From that laden air, the so cadaverous murmur of that sanctuary, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... secures the assistance of two priests, one to pronounce the formula, the other to follow the ritual accurately. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... records of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom, Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful; and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the first act only, and does not seem to have known how many connections the Grail ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to destroy the life of the soul by so much as one false or cruel word! It is with a deep sense of the exact balance of God's justice, that I stand before you to-day, my friends, and ask you without any accepted ritual or ceremonial to hear my vows of marriage. She to whom I pledge my word and life, is one who in the world's eyes is accounted great, because rich in this world's goods,—but her wealth has no attraction ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... industry must, in spite of this, have been extraordinary; for he shows an intimate acquaintance not only with all that is eminent in Greek and Latin literature, but with many recondite departments of ritual, antiquities, and philosophy, [12] besides being a true interpreter of nature, an excellence that does not come without the habit as well as the love of converse with her. Of his personal feelings we know but little, for ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... buildings began to be built in Western Europe, all of them looked to Rome, and not to Constantinople, as their common ecclesiastical centre. It is not surprising that, as soon as differences between the ritual of the Eastern and the Western Church sprang up, a contrast between Eastern and Western architecture should establish itself, and that the early structures of the many countries where the Roman Church flourished never wandered far from ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... voice crying out over my mother's grave. "'I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me. Write. From henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.'" And then the voice faltered and broke. "She was the light of my life and the joy of my heart," it was no longer the ritual of the church; "and yet had I to walk beside her and tell her naught. And now is she taken from me, for the Lord hath received her to His bosom to live in the light ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... daughters' voices, musical as a pigeon-loft, as they chattered catchwords at each other and their partners, or occasionally, very occasionally, dipped in for a three-minute swim. Moreover, and supremely, it was a triumph of ritual, and such ritual as reminded Oliver a little of the curious, unanimous and apparently meaningless movements of a colony of penguins, for the entire assemblage had arrived around, twelve o'clock and by a quarter past one not one of them would ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... gentle inspiration, as if all this was part of some ritual that he was repeating by heart. Quiet, almost timid as he looked, Vera knew from past experience that no efforts of hers could turn him from his intention. That he would do anything for a Le Fenu she knew full well, and all this in return for some little kindness which her father had afforded ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... was done! They were one, never more to part until the coffin-lid closed over one or the other. They were kneeling together now, and the vicar was rapidly repeating some psalms and prayers. But Frank's mind was not with the ritual. He looked slantwise at the graceful, girlish figure by his side. Her hair hung beautifully over her white neck, and the reverent droop of her head was lovely to his eyes. So gentle, so humble, so good, so ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were good; but the first only ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... action. I cannot help thinking that this is a mistake. We kept our telegraph offices open day and night, and I am strongly of opinion that we gained rather than lost by our departure from the established ritual of revolutions. The news which came to us from England was often encouraging, and generally of some value. Nor do I think that the Government gained any advantage over us by the messages which Clithering as their agent, or Bland and others in their capacity ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... maintained, with indifferent ritual and devotional observances. But there was to Mrs. Ginx's faith a corollary or secondary creed, only needed to ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Southern ears. We can easily conceive of a peculiar style of music being produced from the bosom of the Greek Church. Those who have heard the melancholy and touching, half-barbaric music usually employed in its ritual, will not be surprised that out of it there should arise a quite ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... under the title of Twelve Good Men (1888). Protests against the inclusion of Dr Vance Smith among the revisers, against the nomination of Dean Stanley to be select preacher in the university of Oxford, and against the address in favour of toleration in the matter of ritual, followed in succession. In 1876 Burgon was made dean of Chichester. He died on the 4th of August 1888. His life was written by Dean E.M. Goulburn (1892). Vehement and almost passionate in his convictions, Burgon nevertheless ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... small center of population there is a Russian State Church. In America we have been accustomed to call these Greek Catholic Churches, but they are not. The ritual and creed are admittedly rather similar, but the church government, the architecture, the sacred pictures and symbols, and the cross, are all thoroughly Russian. Until the revolution, the Czar was ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of medieval glass, sumptuous hangings were suspended in many places and the altars twinkling with lighted candles added much gilding and colour to the aisles. All this barbarous crowding of colour and ornament, all this splendour of a ritual that appealed to an age capable of stilling the voice of conscience with an absolution obtainable for a few pence has passed away, but the vast building remains to tell of the reality of endeavour of ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... as though seeking among the tiny, far-winking stars the words of some half-forgotten ritual, and her voice rose in ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... together into still more marvellous and rapturous combinations;—and well indeed and lawfully, while he keeps to that line which is his own; but, should he happen to be attracted, as he well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he resolve by means of his art to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine Office,—(he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and Religion will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but)—is it not certain, from the circumstances ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the teachings of the saints and sages of other religions, he will find that the essence of spiritual thought contained in them all is about the same as that contained in Christianity. The mistake which has been made by missionaries and others lie in thinking that the ritual and practices of the masses represent the thoughts of the great spiritual luminaries of those religions. The masses of the Oriental countries no more represent the real thoughts of the great spiritual teachers of those countries than the commercial cannibalism of ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... English Church upon lines that proved permanent. A new era was also inaugurated for literature and art. Literature was represented by Hadrian, who set up education at St. Augustine's upon an improved plan; and art, especially in relation to religious and educational institutions—books, buildings, ritual—was the province ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... vigilant over his surviving honors. This he owed to his country as well as to his family. He recoiled from what he figured to himself (but too often falsely figured) as the haughty and disdainful English nobility—-all so rich, all so polished in manner, all so punctiliously correct in the ritual of bienseance. Lord Carbery might face them gayly and boldly: for he was rich, and, although possessing Irish estates and an Irish mansion, was a thorough Englishman by education and early association. "But I," said Lord Massey, "had a careless Irish education, and am never quite sure that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... rolled the wonderful harmonies born of faith and genius; from the pulpit came in sonorous English the interpretation of the scene as a gifted mind perceived it; about the altar the ancient ritual enacted the holy drama, whose sublime enchantment holds every age. Around rose the towering arches, the steady columns, the broad walls, lighted from the storied windows, of the first really great temple of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Ascension Day, when we also went to church, but, it being a week-day, we wore our school caps in the place of high hats. Ascension Day thus falling, if I may so express myself, within the Octave of "Cock-hat Sunday," I decreed that the customary ritual must be observed with the school caps, and my little flock obeyed me implicitly. So eager were some of the boys to do honour to this religious festival, that their caps were worn at such an impossible angle that they kept tumbling ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... seemed a sort of civic dissenters, with the implication of some such quality of offence as the notion of dissent suggests to minds like theirs. We had a political religion like their own, with a hierarchy, a ritual, an establishment all complete, and we violently broke with it. But it is safe to conjecture that this sort of Englishman is too old or too old-fashioned to live much longer; he suffers with the decay ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... solemn acts of the legislature, of the Romish ritual and the papal authority, though attended with the entire prohibition of all protestant worship, was not sufficient for the bigotry of Mary. Aware that the new doctrines still found harbour in the bosoms of her subjects, she sought to drag them by her violence from this last asylum; for ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... them. He was afflicted and confounded by the information which they gave him, that the victorious army was full of hot-headed schemers and levellers, who were against King and Church, prelacy and ritual, and who were for a free Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief and worship. He was appalled to find that the heresies of the Antinomians, Arminians, and Anabaptists had made sadder breaches in the ranks of Cromwell than the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the daggers of the roysterers who followed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... things down to you, unrol 'em, grin, charge you 100 per cent over value, note them down in a penny memorandum-book, sing out 'Caesh! Caesh!' &c. &c.: and so we shall get all Julia wants, and go through the ritual of shopping without the substantial ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade |
