"Ritualistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meaningless formalities of the preparation of the Mass. But they would not spend a minute if they were themselves sceptics and thought them meaningless formalities, as most modern people do think of the formalities about Black Rod or the Bar of the House. They would be far less ritualistic than we are, if they cared as little for the Mass as we do for the Mace. Hence it is necessary for us to realise that these rude and simple worshippers, of all the different forms of worship, really would be bewildered ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... slip of memory, the slightest accidental impurity, made him a bad priest, injurious to himself and harmful to those worshippers who had entrusted him with their interests before the gods. Since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established of associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for us to realise what an extraordinary anomaly the Christian faith presented at its origin, surrounded by religions which had nothing to do with morality, conduct, or spiritual life, but were purely ritualistic. And here, in the midst of them, started up a religion bare and bald, and with no appeal to sense, no temple, no altar, no sacrifice. But the Apostles with one accord declare that they had all these things in far higher form than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... David had come to feel more respectfully towards Dora than she had ever succeeded in making him feel towards herself. In the beginning of their acquaintance he had often launched into argument with Dora about religious matters, especially about the Ritualistic practices in which she delighted. The lad, overflowing with his Voltaire and d'Holbach, had not been able to forbear, and had apparently taken a mischievous pleasure in shocking a bigot—as he had originally conceived Lucy Purcell's cousin to be. The discussion, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his hostess. Lady Pickering noticed; but she was vexed, rather than jealous. She couldn't imagine that Gerald felt anything but a purely intellectual interest in such talks. It was rather as if a worshipper in some highly ritualistic shrine, filled with appeals to sight and hearing, had unaccountably wandered off into a wayside chapel. Lady Pickering felt convinced that this was mere vagrant curiosity on Gerald's part. She felt convinced that he couldn't care for chapels. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Hopi are a remarkably religious people. I question whether there is to be found elsewhere in the world so ritualistic a people as they are. They have ceremonies—all of religious character for every month of the year, and some of them require from eight to sixteen days for their observance. Their dances are propitiations of the gods ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Japan, we may pass it by. For although the books and writings belonging to Southern Buddhism, and comprehended under the formula of the Hinayana or Smaller Vehicle, have been studied in China, Korea and Japan, yet they have had comparatively little influence upon doctrinal, ritualistic, or missionary ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Goldmark, owes her name, but not her nature or any of her experiences, to the pastoral play which Solomon is credited with having written. The Song of Songs contributes, also, a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic service celebrated in the Temple finds its prototype in some verses from Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that "Die Knigin von Saba" owes to the sacred Scriptures. Solomon's magnificent reign and marvelous wisdom, which contribute ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in ritualism; by which they mean, I imagine, a symbolism too complex, elaborate, and mechanical. But whenever they talk of ritualism they always seem to mean the ritualism of the Church. Why should they not mean the ritual of the world? It is much more ritualistic. The ritual of the Army, the ritual of the Navy, the ritual of the Law Courts, the ritual of Parliament are much more ritualistic. The ritual of a dinner-party is much more ritualistic. Priests ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... in Frome worth seeing. It is a building of much greater dignity within than the exterior suggests, and has been restored on a very elaborate scale by a former incumbent, the Rev. W.J. Bennett (1852-66), a figure of note in the early Ritualistic controversies. The tower, crowned with a spire, is somewhat eccentricly placed at the E. end of the S. aisle. The interior is remarkable for its heterogeneous mixture of styles and its multitude of side chapels, of which St Nicholas's, the Lady Chapel, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Hansard frown, Confused by lore statistic? Or will those lips e'er stir the town From pulpit ritualistic? Will e'er that tiny Sybarite Become an author noted? That little brain the world's delight, Its works ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... attics of literature awhile, only to be rediscovered. And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is damned good to steal from.' If he uses words as though they were pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable, but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke. Pater thinks beautifully always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful, perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud. We overhear ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and such people had lost their head, and thereby their strength. And she had been staunch to her own party, preferring bad tea from a low-church grocer, to good tea from a grocer who went to the ritualistic church or to no church at all. And it is due to her to say that she did not forget those who were true to her,—looking after them mindfully where looking after might be profitable, and fighting their battles where fighting might be ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sank toward the clouds. It sped through them, stone-blind from the mist. And then there was a small airfield below, and the pilot and co-pilot began a pattern of ritualistic conversation. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... all other ranks. They had begun to work over the Vedas to suit their own purposes, selecting from them such portions as could be framed into an elaborate ritual—known as the Brahmanas. The period during which they continued this ritualistic development is known as the Brahmana period. This extended from about eight hundred to five hundred B.C.[37] These, however, are only the approximate estimates of modern scholarship: such a thing as ancient history is unknown to the Hindu race. This Brahmana period was ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... progressive movement attended at first by a partial reaction, and it is not at all unlikely that Ritualistic clergymen have been terrified into an increased reliance upon forms and rites by the disastrous effects produced upon many of their followers or fellow-churchmen by the new controversial ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... site of a cow-yard, and is a broad street with fine houses on the east side. Here is St. Paul's Church, celebrated for the ritualistic tendencies of its successive vicars. It was built in 1843 by subscription on the drill ground of the old barracks, and cost L11,000, the site being given by the Marquis of Westminster. The building by Cundy is handsome, in Early Perpendicular style, and has sittings ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... as he applied a match flame to the tobacco in his pipe. "The Nipe race must, of necessity, have had some similar ritualistic tests or they would not have become what they are," he said when he had puffed the pipe alight. "And we have already agreed that once the Nipes adopted something of that kind, it remained with them. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to struggle against her hand, but she shook her head gently. Her other hand began a series of complicated motions that had a ritualistic look about them. ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... radical change, and this period of incipient revolution is precisely the period (722-480) treated of in Confucius' history, the first history of China—meagre though it be—which deals with definite human facts, instead of "beating the air" (as the Chinese say) with sermons and ritualistic exhortations. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... religion is thus allowed to become a ready-made day-dream it will certainly interest adolescents of a certain sort. The naturally introverted type will become meditative; whilst their opposites, the extroverted or active type, will probably tend to be ritualistic. But here again we are missing the essence ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... erect a memorial to his memory, Milman was much hurt at finding that it was determined to give it a distinctly Tractarian character, and that his own name was deliberately excluded. In Milman's last years the Oxford movement had begun to assume its ritualistic form, and questions of vestments and ceremonies and candles came to the forefront. With all this Milman had no sympathy. 'After the drama,' he said of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Christ by preaching it to the heathen." He was at this time a High-Churchman of a very narrow type, full of exaggerated notions about church discipline, extremely anxious to revive obsolete rubrics, and determined to force the strictest ritualistic observances upon rude colonists, for whom of all men they were least adapted. He insisted upon adopting baptism by immersion, and refused to baptize a child whose parents objected to that form. He would not permit any non-communicant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... islands as Christian teachers, and with whose views on such matters as dress and recreation their own are somewhat at variance. In the first instance, the habit they wore, their designations, the presence of Miss Sellon, the fame of whose Ritualistic tendencies had reached the islands, and their manifest connection with a section of the English Church which is regarded here with peculiar disfavour, roused a strongly antagonistic feeling regarding their work and the drift of their religious teaching. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... is the conscious ritualism which is comparatively simple, the unconscious ritual which is really heavy and complicated. The ritual which is comparatively rude and straightforward is the ritual which people call "ritualistic." It consists of plain things like bread and wine and fire, and men falling on their faces. But the ritual which is really complex, and many coloured, and elaborate, and needlessly formal, is the ritual which people enact ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... item was variously understood, some supposing it aimed at the Jesuits, and some at the Puritans. It was popularly reported that the King "loved no Puritans," as it was now usual to term those Churchmen who declined to walk in the Ritualistic ways of the High Church party. To restrict the term Puritan to Nonconformists is a modern mistake. When, therefore, James began his reign by large remittances of fines to his Romish subjects, issued a declaration against toleration, revived the Star ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... foundations of reality. We follow Onan because he is real, because the past has existed, and it is certain that it will continue to exist, and because that existence dictates the operation of the present. Although we may seem ritualistic and entrenched in tradition to the outside observer, we enjoy the comforts of knowing that we are on a well tread path, that we are not alone in time but in company with our forebears. We are called the Pastites because of our beliefs, because of our ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... Canticles, from which it was borrowed by the librettist, but no element of her character nor any of the incidents in which she is involved. The "Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" contributes a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic service which is celebrated in the temple finds its original text in the opening verses of Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that the opera owes to the Bible. It is not ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... altar of pine logs was erected near the lodge of We-lo-lon-nan-nai, and a buffalo bull, freshly captured for the purpose, driven to the spot, killed, and his hide taken off. The entire carcass was lifted with much ritualistic observance upon the altar, and then the whole tribe, in obedience to the order of the head medicine-man, prostrated themselves on the ground. Touching a torch to the pile, and wrapping himself in the bloody skin of the animal, the medicine-man ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... ajar at his back, a pair of vigilant human orbs were upon him, the ritualistic organist, who was in very low spirits, drew an emaciated and rather unsteady hand repeatedly across his perspiring brow, and talked ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... West, known by the archaic name of Thlae[']-k'iae-tchu, instead of by its ordinary name of Sus-ki, and the Prey Mole or god of the Lower regions (Plate III, Fig. 5), which is named Mai-tu-pu, also archaic, instead of K'iae[']-lu-tsi. Yet in most of the prayer and ritualistic recitals of this order all of these gods are spoken of by the names which distinguish them in the ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... money, sending most of it home. Their society seemed to be a loose theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with others, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... the old religious authority is gone. Our church is thronged because of a peculiar personal power with which I am endowed. I could wield that power without a church, society, creed or Bible. Esthetic forces now draw people to non-ritualistic churches that once came for prayer and preaching. The preacher must secularise his sermon or talk to vacant pews. Historic Christianity has been destroyed by Criticism. A thousand wild Isms nourish in the twilight of this eclipse of Faith, while Materialism and the Pursuit of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... or ritualistic image, is a concrete living organic thing carrying all manner of magical and subtle associations. It is an expression of reality which comes much nearer to reality than any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or ritualistic image is a concrete expression of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys |
