ritual observances Quotes

Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

It depends on what you mean by the word religion. Certainly I don't go to temples and pray to the gods or anything like that.

It's clear all the way through history that practices are primary and beliefs are secondary.

Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.

The word religion literally means, in Latin, to link or bind together; and despite the vast variation in the world's religions, Wilson shows that religions always serve to coordinate and orient people's behavior toward each other and toward the group as a whole, sometimes for the purpose of competing with other groups.

It is meritorious to insist on forms; religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable one.

The Jewes spend at Easter, the Moors at marriages, the Christians in sutes.