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Ritualistic   Listen
adjective
Ritualistic  adj.  Pertaining to, or in accordance with, a ritual; adhering to ritualism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ritualistic" Quotes from Famous Books



... under these circumstances, to see the idea of sin also cease to have reference to moral obliquity and violation of ethical principles, and to refer only to intellectual blindness and (more commonly) to ceremonial laxness and ritualistic malfeasance. It is not surprising, therefore, that under this double departure from the truth, conscience should have lost its place of importance and of authority to so large an ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... his choice and passed over to the Roman Church half a century ago. Some of those who were essentially in harmony with his views preceded, and many followed him. But many remained; and, as the quondam Puseyite and present Ritualistic party, they are continuing that work of sapping and mining the Protestantism of the Anglican Church which he and his friends so ably commenced. At the present time, they have no little claim to be considered victorious all along the line. I ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... of pleasure as the legitimate aim of the human race, sex and everything connected with sex comes naturally to be of paramount interest. Sex in every conceivable aspect, and religion in its best aspect—that is to say in its ritualistic one—are the things round which the cerebral passion of this versatile humanist ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... Handel's sublime "Hallelujah Chorus" or "The Marvellous Works" of Haydn. What can be more inspiring than the grand old church music we possess, bequeathed to us by composers of immortal memory. Though much opposed to the present Ritualistic tendencies I do delight in a musical service. It seems to elevate the mind and give a greater depth to our devotion. Go into any of our cathedrals and hear the solemn tones of the Liturgy echoing ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... knew it well, so that when, one Sunday morning, a Canadian clergyman at the hotel wished to go to the cathedral, I offered to guide him. He was evidently a man of deep sincerity, and, as was soon revealed by his conversation, of high-church and even ritualistic tendencies; but, to my great surprise, he remarked that he had never attended service in a Roman Catholic church. Arriving at the cathedral too late for the high celebration, we walked down the nave until we came to a side altar where a priest was going through ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... with the Divine Life, his belief in angels and their help, in saints and their prayers, and because he believes he is able to work under conditions which make life for a cultured man almost intolerable. But he works, thankful to be left alone by his bishop: for war has declared a close time for ritualistic curates. But the soldier whose patriotism he has nurtured writes home to him telling frankly his experiences, his dreams, his visions. I have seen many of these letters. The writers are not liars nor are they hysterical subjects, but fine specimens of healthy manhood. Here and there a dissenting ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... was the natural fruitage of the seeds planted during the second and third centuries. There we began to notice particularly foreign elements which stand out in bold contrast to the simple forms of primitive Christianity. One of these innovations was the development of the ritualistic spirit, according to which undue importance was attached to particular forms of worship, such as time, place, positions of the body, and ceremonial observances in general. Take baptism for an example. Apart from ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... a respect for their votes, you mean," Muriel rejoined. "You know you're really ritualistic High Church. If your constituents knew as much about St. Cuthbert's as I do, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... avarice also, but it was not meanness. It was a sort of religious conservation of his own power, his own self. Fortunately he could leave all business transactions on our account to Maria, so that his relation with us was purely ritualistic. He would have given me anything, trusting implicitly that I would fulfil my own nature as Signore, one of those more godlike, nearer the light of perfection than himself, a peasant. It was pure bliss to him to bring us the first-fruit of the garden, it was ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... their orders, if indeed the great majority of those of the later day had ever realized the meaning of their office, for the Spanish writers of the time delight in characterizing them as the meanest of the Spanish peasantry, when not something worse, who had been "lassoed," taught a few ritualistic prayers, and shipped to the Philippines to be placed in isolated towns as lords and masters of the native population, with all the power and prestige over a docile people that the sacredness of their holy office gave them. These writers treat the matter lightly, seeing ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... they traded a few of them usually settled, and where they settled they made 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 ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... the music of pageantry, cloth-of-gold and scarlet vestments; pendant jewels and multicolored dimness shouldering upward to be lost in vaulted stone. It was music which awaited the accompaniment of whispers, thousands of awed, ritualistic sibilants which would carry no knowable meaning and only one avowed purpose. Soft music, soft, soft; not soft as to volume, for the volume grew and grew, but soft with the softness of clouds which are soft for all their mountain-size and brilliance; ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... suggested putting the ban on scarlet neckties. Saint Peter's Parish was set like a holy beacon in the very midst of a valley which was tainted with heresies Arian and unspeakable, tainted so thoroughly that the ritualistic development of Saint Peter's was delayed for ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... East religion covers the whole social and political field to a far greater extent than in the West. Now, the religion of the Moslem is, comparatively speaking, very easy to understand. There are, indeed, a few ritualistic and other minor points as to which a Western may at times have some difficulty in grasping the Oriental point of view. But the foundations of monotheistic Islam are simplicity itself; indeed, it may be said that ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... was his hobby, and, if the truth must be told, he was a little "High" in his views; without attaching himself to the Ultra-Ritualistic party, he was still strongly impregnated with many of their ideas; he preferred Gregorian to Anglican chants, and would have had no objection to incense if his diocesan could have been ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... aunts had faded in, and she could not find just such houses anywhere in Hatboro'. The decay of the Unitarians as a sect perhaps had something to do with the literary lapse of the place: their highly intellectualised belief had favoured taste in a direction where the more ritualistic and emotional religions did not promote it: and it is certain that they were no longer the ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... combined to break that parasol. You luxuriate in the memory of all those long rooms and departments and wonder in which of them the parasol that you never ordered was broken. Or you want a toy elephant for your child on Christmas Day; as children, like all nice and healthy people, are very ritualistic. Some week or so after Twelfth Night, let us say, you have the pleasure of removing three layers of pasteboards, five layers of brown paper, and fifteen layers of tissue paper and discovering the fragments of an artificial crocodile. You smile in an expansive spirit. You feel that your soul has been ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... of Pagan deities and their ritualistic worship, there was a force inherent in the very nature of Christianity which worked toward the degradation of the sex life. After the death of Christ, his followers had divorced their thoughts from all things earthly and set about fitting themselves for their ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... the 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 ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... altered their forms to suit his purpose, and gave them a name and value determined by himself. This alphabet was at once adopted by the tribe for all purposes for which writing can be used, including the recording of their shamanistic prayers and ritualistic ceremonies. The formulas here given, as well as those of the entire collection, were written out by the shamans themselves—men who adhere to the ancient religion and speak only their native language—in order that their sacred knowledge ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... 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 other orders ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... brow o'er 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 ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... and strange in that exceptional avocation which takes one to-day to a Lord Mayor's feast or a croquet tournament, to-morrow to a Ritualistic service, next day to the home of a homicide. I am free to confess that each has its special attractions for me. I am very much disposed to "magnify my office" in this respect, not from any foolish idea that I am "seeing ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... 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 factors ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... that I was chiefly troubled. The poor child did not seem able to rally from her shock at all. She crept about looking miserable and strained, and seemed to take an interest in nothing. I sent her away to her aunt at Bournemouth for a change; Bournemouth has not only sea air but ritualistic churches of the kind she likes; but I do not think it did her much good. Her affection for poor Oliver had, indeed, gone very deep, and she has ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... the only thing 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, and St John Baptist's are on the N., ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... ceremonies of which are not surrounded with more theatrical forms," the lama answered. "This is a ritualistic phase which does not by any means violate the fundamental principles of Buddhism. It is a practical means for maintaining in the ignorant mass obedience to and love for the one Creator, just as a child is beguiled by toys to do the will of ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... 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

... all over the land in carrying forward the underlying principles of Masonry. It has taught woman to preside in public meetings and to make herself conversant in parliamentary law. Masonry unites the heads of families, whereas the Eastern Star unites the entire families. Its ritualistic teachings are designed to inculcate morals and to improve the social virtues. The Order comprises 3,491 chapters with a membership ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... of 28th September, which came very soon after my birthday. This morning we went to a Presbyterian Church by mistake, but it was very dull and we soon went out and went to another close by, which turned out to be Ritualistic, but at any rate the music, and better still, the sermon, was very good,—"What think ye of Christ?" It was all of Him, so no one could object, not even you! Hedley and I then rushed off to the Lincoln Institution for Training ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... tridents, prayer-mills, yaks' tails, and flags on poles give colour and movement, while the jangle of cymbals, the ringing of bells, the incessant beating of big drums and gongs, and the braying at intervals of six-foot silver horns, attest the ritualistic activities of the communities within. The gonpos contain from two up to three hundred lamas. These are not cloistered, and their duties take them freely among the people, with whom they are closely linked, a ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... 1,000,000 pounds, waited. Gathered around the refined and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which, in filial respect to their father's Tory instincts and their mother's Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect was dazzling as it was refined. It was this peculiarity and their strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, "'Pon my soul, you know, the whole precious mob looked like ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... 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 may put gold and great jewels on the chalice; but at least ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... hell.' The reason is simple. You can never persuade the mass of men till you can threaten them. Religions which cannot threaten the selfish have no power at all; and till the positivists can threaten, they will remain a mere 'Ritualistic Social Science Association.' Briefly, the utilitarian asks, What is the sanction of morality? And the Puritan gives the answer, Hell. Here, then, apparently, we have the keystone of the arch. What is the good of government in general? ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... the literal and visible reincarnation of Siva, the Avatar of Destruction. She has originated nothing. Her mass and all her ritualistic mummeries are adopted from paganism at its worst stage and in its most degenerate form, and she awaits the fate that befell Egypt and all her predecessors, "Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... The sacrificial animal—in the case before us a lamb—had to be guarded against all imperfections, impurities, and contaminations. The priest had to be careful to put on the proper dress, to speak the proper words, and to be himself free from any ritualistic impurity. Before proceeding to the inspection of the animal, in order to forecast the future, the priest had to take care that nothing might happen to interfere with the proper observation of the rites. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... medicine dances are ritualistic in character and must be performed with great strictness, but in the case of the Chisera the dance is assumed to be made up of various dance elements expressing the emotion of the moment, combined by individual ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... agonizing. On her most despairing days she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But without the protection of Kennicott's presence she did not go to the Jolly Seventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only when she went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternoon calls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean gloves and minute handkerchiefs and sealskin card-cases and countenances of frozen approbation, sat on the edges of chairs and inquired, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... of religion no more return to Nature than in that of economics. 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 ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit

... 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 ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... terms of poetry and imagination. In the later Vedic works called the Brahmaf@nas and the Ara@nyakas written mostly in prose, which followed the Vedic hymns, there are two tendencies, viz. one that sought to establish the magical forms of ritualistic worship, and the other which indulged in speculative thinking through crude generalizations. This latter tendency was indeed much feebler than the former, and it might appear that the ritualistic tendency had actually swallowed up what little ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... distance, but still on the table, a kettle moaned over a spirit-lamp. Alice was cutting bread for toast. The fire was of the right redness for toast, and a toasting-fork lay handy. As winter advanced, Alice's teas had a tendency to become cosier and cosier, and also more luxurious, more of a ritualistic ceremony. And to avoid the trouble and danger of going through a cold passage to the kitchen, she arranged matters so that the entire operation could be performed with comfort and decency ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... knowledge of the Rational People's language eleven days later when he sat down to drink herb infused hot water with Joe and other Old Ones in the low-roofed wooden building around which clustered a village of two hundred humanoids. He fidgeted through interminable ritualistic cups of hot water. Eventually Joe hid his hands in the sleeves of his robe and turned with an air of polite inquiry. Now we get down to ...
— Blessed Are the Meek • G.C. Edmondson

... off, and repudiate me? Selfish you think? I dare say I am, but religion now-a-day winks at that, nay fosters it. Each church is an octopus, and the members are laboriously striving to disprove the Saviour's admonition: 'Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' I am no worse than my ritualistic sisters whom I meet and gossip with, under cover of the organ muttering, and sometimes I wonder if after all we are any nearer the kingdom of heaven that Christ preached, than the pagans whose customs we retain under evangelical names. 'They ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... it is worth noting that the things which Roman writers actually refer to Etruria, are all of them most superficial: a few of the insignia of political office; a few of the trappings of one or two ritualistic acts; a branch of divination, by the consultation of the entrails (haruspicina), which was of secondary importance compared to augury; and the most depraved form of Roman public sport, the gladiatorial ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... the Irish Church, the campaign naturally assumed a theological character. On the 20th of August Lord Shaftesbury wrote: "Dizzy is seeking everywhere for support. He is all things to all men, and nothing to anyone. He cannot make up his mind to be Evangelical, Neologian, or Ritualistic; he is ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... Popish supremacy. There are to be found clergymen of the Church of England who can, unconcernedly, see many of their flock going over to the Church of Rome, whom they have possibly led half-way there; and yet should any of the rest of their congregation, disgusted with their Ritualistic practices, or fearing the effect of their false teaching on their children, strive to set up an independent place of worship, or to join any already established body of Christians, anathemas are hurled at their heads, and they are told that ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... immediately forms, entering the church and passing up the aisle to the strains of the wedding march. In England a lovely innovation is made on this threadbare custom by having a chorus of boy-voices sing an epithalamium, or wedding ode, during their progress. This custom has found its way here in some ritualistic churches where the vested choir march, two and two, at the head of the bridal procession, singing as they march. Sometimes as high as forty, and even seventy, in number swell ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... the Archbishop, detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that foundation of piety over which he presides—all this seems to me an act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history." In this judgment the least ritualistic of laymen will heartily concur. But from Archbishop Howley to Archbishop Temple is a far cry, and the latest enthronement in Canterbury Cathedral must have made clear to the most casual eye the enormous transformation ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... thought of a great cathedral. The celebrant, the deacon and the subdeacon were represented by first and second footmen, the third footman, who never left the sideboard, he compared to the acolyte, the voice of the great butler proposing different wines had a ritualistic ring in it; and, amused by his conception of dinner in Berkeley Square, Ulick admired Owen's dress. He wore a black velvet coat, trousers, and slippers. His white frilled shirt and his pearl studs reminded Ulick ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... bit Ritualistic. I wish he was, it would be so much prettier; and then he always advertises for curates of moderate views, and they are so stupid. You never saw such a stick as we have got now, Mr. Edwards; and his wife isn't a ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... description of the fire walking itself may not be out of place; it will show that the Japs had nothing new to offer aside from the ritualistic ceremonials with which they camouflaged the hocus-pocus of the performance, which is merely a survival of the ordeal by fire ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... parents of the poet Swinburne, but they left some years since, because, it is affirmed, there was no church hereabouts sufficiently ritualistic to content their consciences. One cannot help thinking, with a little unmalicious amusement, what a cuckoo child the poet must have been to this pair. Here, too, lived a good old man and prolix poet, a friend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... 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 they ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... at least primarily, for the purpose of healing disease; and while designated medicine ceremonies, they are, in fact, ritualistic prayers. There are so many of these ceremonies that no student has yet determined their number, which reaches into scores, while the component ritual prayers of some number hundreds. The principal ceremonies are those that require nine days and nine nights in their performance. Of ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... anti-Catholic, just before his conversion, and five years later another, in which he had attempted to turn all his clever jibes against Catholics into even cleverer innuendoes against Episcopalians. He was intensely ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be a celibate, and rather liked ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... meticulous conformity. It emphasizes form rather than content. Since conformity is the only criterion, the appearance of conformity is all that is required. The individual may fear to dissent openly rather than actually. This is seen frequently in the ritualistic performance or fulfillment of a duty in all its external details, rather than the actual and positive performance of its content. It is just such Pharisaism that is protested against in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... 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 of ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... the mob. In their inability to overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with a view of showing the incompetence of the priests, they affected rigid theories in regard to ritualistic points. Every detail of the ceremonial office was watched by them with eyes that were never pleased. They asserted that the rolls of the Law from which the priests read the Pentateuch were made of impure matter, and, having ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... 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 ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... 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 ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... the fury and indignation of Wil'sbro', Backsworth, and all the squires around. Of course it was a delirious fancy of poor Raymond Poynsett, and Miles had been worked upon by his puritanical wife and ritualistic brother to publish it. Newspapers teemed with abuse of superstition and pharisaism, and praise of this wholesome, moral, and 'truly English' sport. Gentlemen, and ladies too, took the remonstrance as a personal offence, and threatened ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Greek church there is a body called Staroviersty (Old Believers). The difference between them and the adherents of the orthodox faith is more ritualistic than doctrinal. Both make the sign of the cross, though each has its own way of holding the fingers in the operation. The Staroviersty do not use tobacco in any form, and their mode of life is generally quite rigid. Under Catherine and Paul they were persecuted, and, as a matter of course, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... great deal of mysterious consultation between Miss Francis and her assistants, punctuated by ritualistic samplings of the vegetation and soil. When these ceremonies were complete four stakes and a wooden mallet were produced and the corners of a square, about 200 by 200, were pegged. The cylinders were unloaded, set ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... eye is fixed on the sharp, bright edge of high Hellenic culture but loses sight of the sombre world across which it strikes. Greek religion, where we can observe it most distinctly, is at once a magnificent ritualistic system, and a cycle of poetical conceptions. Religions, as they grow by natural laws out of man's life, are modified by whatever modifies his life. They brighten under a bright sky, they become liberal as the social range widens, they ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... Moreover, approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... of all this was a lowering of the dignity of Christ, taking away His saving power and the "substitution of various ascetic abstinences and ritualistic practices (2:20) for trust in Him, the worship of angels (2:18), and a reveling in dreams and visions." "This was kindred to a type of speculation which later became rife ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... ablucre, "to wash off''), a washing, in its religious use, destined to secure that ceremonial or ritualistic purity which must not be confused with the physical or hygienic cleanliness of persons and things obtained by the use of soap and water.1 Indeed the two states may contradict each other, as in the case of the 4th-century Christian pilgrim to Jerusalem who boasted that she ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... shoulders of bystanders. In speaking of these ceremonies, Boas, quoted by Bourke, says that members of the tribes practicing Hamatsa ceremonies show remarkable scars produced by biting, and at certain festivals ritualistic cannibalism is practiced, it being the duty of the Hamatsa to bite portions of flesh out of the arms, legs, or breast of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... had been a great surprise to the neighbourhood when it was known that the Honourable and Reverend Eustace Thynne (to say the Reverend the Honourable, which is now the highest fashion in such matters, postponing, as is meet, secular rank to that of the Church, was unknown in those pre-Ritualistic days), a young man, an earl's son, an entirely unexceptionable and indeed every way laudable individual, had accepted this post. A greater surprise it would be impossible to imagine. The Warrenders had been as much interested ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... mama means "to chew," but not for the purpose of swallowing like food, but to spit out of the mouth, as in the preparation of awa. The term may therefore, authorities say, be connected with the ceremonial chewing of awa in the ritualistic invocations to the gods. A similar prayer quoted by Gill (Myths and Songs, 120) he ascribes to ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... because it is based on the immovable 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 tradition based lives that instill ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... by Mr. Zincke, Vicar of a Village {149b} near Ipswich. Did you know, or do you believe, that the Mummy was wrapt up into its Chrysalis Shape as an Emblem of Future Existence; wrapt up, too, in bandages all inscribed with ritualistic directions for its intermediate stage, which was not one of total Sleep? I supposed that this might be a piece of ingenious Fancy: but Cowell, who has been over to see me, says ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... bright afternoon, and that a nursemaid in uniform with her children—bare-legged tots with fingers in the sand—that such sight is more worthy of respect than a dead Duchess painted on the wall. It is but a ritualistic obeisance I have paid the gods inside. My finer reverence has been for benches in the sun and the vagabondage ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... Church is he to belong to?" asked Mr. Mivers,—"High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Puseyite Church, Ritualistic Church, or any other Established Church that ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... most part considerably his seniors, among whom, in spite of the presence of Whately, High Church principles probably predominated already, and were destined soon to predominate in the most extreme sense, for the college presently became the focus of the Ritualistic and Romanizing movement. Thus, up to twenty-three, Keble's life had been that of a sort of acolyte, and though not ascetic (for his nature appears to have been always genial and mirthful), entirely clerical ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... religions of 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 ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... not to be. Martin never was and he always left the house for his office at exactly eight-twenty. His chauffeur was trained to take just ten minutes trundling the big car down-town, and eight-thirty found him at his desk as invariably as it had found his father before him. It was all perfectly ritualistic, of course. There wasn't the slightest need ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... of Egypt as known to the Jews,—a complicated polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of Nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of the spiritual despotism of the Middle Ages. The priests of Egypt ruled by appealing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... in the drama, owes her name to the 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 Biblical opera, in the degree that Mehul's ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... his grey felt hat between his hands, a somewhat curious figure, and she watched him talking to Monsignor, thinking of the difference of vision. As Ulick said, everything was in that. Men were divided by the difference of their visions. She was curious to know how the dogmatic and ritualistic vision of Monsignor affected Ulick, and when the prelate left she ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... charming as they slowly advanced in a kind of ritualistic procession. Their feet like little white mice, the dragging skirts of their spotless kimonos, their exaggerated care and precision, and their stiff conventional attitudes presented a picture from a Satsuma vase. Their dresses were of all ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... and veto for the House of Lords (the Bishops). In fact, the constitution which our Catholic democrats would like best for the Church closely resembles that of Great Britain before the first Reform Bill. In the same way the ritualistic clergy, while professing a superstitious reverence for the episcopal office, make a point of flouting the authority of their own bishop. The movement, in my opinion, is beginning to break up, and Rome ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... MAN: I'll be delighted, and the aunt, a worthy sister of the dear bishop, has consented. She is an acidulous maiden person with ultra-ritualistic tendencies. At present she is strong on the reunion of Christendom, and holds that the Anglican must be the unifying medium of the two religious extremes. So don't say I didn't warn you fairly. She will, however, impart an air of Episcopalian propriety ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... have not the Holy Spirit, or who do not heed Him, fall easily and naturally into formalism, substituting lifeless ceremonies, sacraments, genuflections, and ritualistic performances for the free, glad, living worship inspired by the indwelling Spirit. They sing, but not from the heart. They say their prayers, but they do not really pray. "I prayed last night, mother," said a child. "Why, my child, you pray ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... 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

... 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 took a position about ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... pretty, merry woman of about thirty, mother of three children; a handsome old lady, hard at work on an embroidered table-cloth—a present, she told us, for a friend, to whose wedding she was going; a young clergyman, whose walk, expression, and general appearance betrayed his ritualistic tendencies, and who strolled up and down, now and then stopping to join in the ladies' conversation. A sad-looking woman lay on the sofa, trying to hide her tear-stained face behind a newspaper which was never turned, the columns to her containing only regrets for dear friends ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... 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 ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... who had long resided on the 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. They are not ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... Sillenger, wife of the colonel of one of the other regiments stationed on the island; Mrs. Malcomson, also the wife of a military man; the Rev. Basil St. John, a man of good family, pronounced refinement, and ultra-ritualistic practices; and Mr. Austin B. Price, a distinguished American diplomatist and man of letters, to whom she became specially attached. Mrs. Beale and Edith also were from that time forward two of her dearest and most valued friends. She looked ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... reign of James was again brought to light and forwarded to Charles, and this would probably have been accepted and authorized for use but for Laud's influence. It however was too bald and simple to suit the ritualistic Archbishop, who persuaded the King that it would be entirely preferable to introduce into Scotland the English Prayer Book without change. Correspondence upon the matter was continued until 1633, when Charles, accompanied by Laud, visited Scotland for the purpose of being crowned, and also "to ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... the utmost possible dread. Believe me, dearest, I was most thankful to find, when I first came down to Luton, that Captain Maynard held the opinions I do, and that your parish was free from any of the ritualistic practices of the day. Much as all must like Mr Lennard for his pleasant manners and kind heart, he is not exactly what I should wish a clergyman to be, but he is at all events thoroughly sound in practice. Believe me, Clara, ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... 3. Liturgical or Ritualistic Psalms. 73-89. Most of them are ascribed to Asaph and, besides being specially prescribed for worship, they ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... bold thinker, a great poet wrestling with the deepest problems of human thought, and towering far above his contemporaries and immediate successors. In his time synagogue poetry reached the zenith of perfection, and even in the solemn admonitions of ritualistic literature, humor now and again asserted itself. One of Gabirol's contemporaries or successors, Isaac ben Yehuda ibn Ghayyat, for instance, often made his whole poem turn ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... embodies the more distinctively ritualistic and ceremonial legislation, is the result of a long and progressive development. Certain of its principles originated with Moses, but its form, which is utterly unlike that of the other parts of the Pentateuch, was received ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... moment, for any awkward movement or the least noise might bring about his destruction. Under such circumstances many a one sends a short prayer to Heaven for assistance in his hour of need. Not so the Indian; he has only formulas and ritualistic performances, and there was no time to remember the former or to think of the latter. Topanashka strained his eyes to the utmost to find out the nature of the suspicious object that lay not far from his hiding-place, but he could arrive at no satisfactory result. It ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... with all my heart," said Miss Matthews, the lady who did not attend ritualistic churches. "Do I understand that the happy arrangement was made in church, Miss Johnson? I gather from Miss Clegson that Mr. Peter ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... 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 ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... of Confucius we have but scanty record. It would seem that from his childhood he showed ritualistic tendencies, and we are told that as a boy he delighted to play at the arrangement of vessels and postures of ceremony. As he advanced in years he became an earnest student of history, and looked back with love and reverence to the time when the great and good Yaou ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... tea in her lofty drawing-room which, with its illumined heights and dim recesses, gave to the ceremony an almost ritualistic state. Mrs. Forrester's drawing-room and Mrs. Forrester herself were long-established features of London, and not to have sat beneath the Louis Quinze chandelier nor have drunk tea out of the blue Worcester cups ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... services were enrapturing to Miss Church-Member, and seemed unlike anything she had ever heard. The operatic rendition of the music, the ritualistic cast of the prayer and the soothing effect of the rhetorical essay which took the place of a sermon, all exercised ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... discovery that he could not drop asleep in his own room, for a minute, without the music stopping and the accordion trying to slip off, the Ritualistic organist was not at all softened in temper by almost simultaneously realizing that the farther skirt of his long linen coat was standing out nearly straight from his person, and, apparently, fluttering ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various

... herself "the last of the Gordons" of the senior line. She died just after I was born, and from her and the "gay Gordons" who preceded her, I derive my name of George. It has always been a comfort to me, when rebuked for ritualistic tendencies, to recall that I am great-great-nephew of that undeniable Protestant, Lord George Gordon, whose icon I daily revere. My grandmother had a numerous family, of whom my father was the third. He was born in Dublin Castle, his father being then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... having its own distinctive appellation. There is also the Methodist Church North and the Methodist Church South. There was the Old and the New School Presbyterian Church. And even in the Episcopal Communion, which is the most conservative body outside the Catholic Church, there is the ritualistic, or high church, and the low church. Nay, if you question closely the individual members composing any one fraction of these denominations, you will not rarely find them giving a contradictory view of their tenets ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... regarded his fellows: a 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 whose sum constituted ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero



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