Family Ritual Quotes & Sayings

True Christians are assured that no temptation (or trial) shall happen to them but what they shall be enabled to bear; and that the grace of Christ shall be sufficient for them. — Roger Sherman

As soon as I arrive at the house, Laurie starts running, hits my chest, knocks me down, and licks my face. It's become a family ritual. — Beverly Sills

Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened. — Roma Downey

Bill and Hillary will spend Easter with her brothers Hugh and Tony and Roger Clinton. They have a family ritual at all holiday dinners. After they sit down, they hold hands, close their eyes, and get their stories straight. — Argus Hamilton

People are losing jobs, people need to be entertained, and I want to make movies that parents and children can look forward to seeing, that can become a kind of family ritual. — Nicolas Cage

Tallent notes that the days surrounding the death are marked not by keening or weeping but instead by a dignified, almost majestical, sense of quiet and contemplation. The deceased's immediate family continues to go about their daily rituals, but their silence, their lack of chatter in this busy, intimate community, is a ritual in itself, and the other villagers give them peace until the bereaved signal their intention to return to the life of the community. Sometimes this silent mourning takes only days; sometimes it takes months. But it is a remarkable demonstration of being absent in a place so intensely present, of being granted solitude while surrounded by many — Hanya Yanagihara

Joe knew that for some, really for most, the derivations of belladonna that blurred their vision and caused their hearts to race would, as well, hasten their forgetting of detail. They would not recall, not readily, any sense of pain or shame or doubt or threat of danger.
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There were always children to be used. Members were obliged to offer their children, although not necessarily every child in a family was used. Some were found to be not suited for the rigor. Some were left alone so that if the involved children in a family were to attempt to tell, siblings could not corroborate their experience. — Judith Spencer

This belonged to my sister-in-law," Prometheus explained. "Pandora."
A lump formed in my throat. "As in Pandora's box?"
Prometheus shook his head. "I don't know how this box business got started. It was never a box. It was a pithos, a storage jar. I suppose Pandora's pithos doesn't have the same ring to it. — Rick Riordan

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season. — Iain M. Banks

The ritual of the blood on the lintel of the door, which protected the Israelites from the angel of death, is an apotropaic (avoidance) ritual, such that the family in question would be 'passed over' by the aforementioned denizen of death. Later Jewish and Christian ideas that amalgamated this story with ideas about the scapegoat's providing a substitutionary remedy should not be read into the original tale. The scapegoat symbolized the removal of sin from the nation and perhaps the judging of a substitute. The blood of the Passover lamb on the door symbolized not a sacrifice for sin but rather protection from divine judgment. There is a difference. — Ben Witherington III

The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture. — Michael Pollan

Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room ... An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter
extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone
beauty is born. — Geoffrey O'Brien

Voodou isn't like that. It isn't concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it's about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. There's a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Voodou says, there's a God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of dirt poor places a million years ago. Voodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right? — William Gibson

Family is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don't have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody. — Ben Kingsley

There was one thing he liked about the human's mating ritual, the female accepting the male's name. Callum liked this not because it denoted possession, but because it signified the birth of a single unit, a family. — Kristen Ashley

Audition? What did you have in mind?"
He laughs. "Nothing too creative. I don't want to push my luck with the sexual harassment thing. Yet. — M. Leighton

Thanksgiving isn't the only thing that has changed. This makes it reassuring somehow to go through the same ritual with the people you're connected to. I guess the truth is, it all boils down to family. Right? — Diane Keaton

What's important is that, come the general election, people think the right things of you. They think that you've got the right values and the right policies. And that you're the right kind of person to lead the country. — George Osborne

When I was a kid, our family used to watch 'Bonanza.' I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual. — Anne Lamott

I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!"
Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high; he and the other Gentleman Bastards were seated at the old witchwood table ... The others began to jeer.
"Liar!" they chorused
"I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass.
"LIAR!"
"I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company."
"LIAR!"
At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!"
"BASTARD! — Scott Lynch

We need to give children ways to help themselves feel good," she tells me. "Parents can start with simple messages throughout the morning that children can repeat - messages such as: It's so easy to get dressed. I love getting dressed. Breakfast is always a fun time. We're all so glad to see each other. We love eating breakfast together. Breakfast makes my body feel good. "Parents can even go around the table and have each family member share one thing they love about themselves. Or they can put affirmations in a bowl and choose one for the whole family to focus on during the day. This can become a morning ritual for couples, families, roommates, and so on. Each person can even decide on one experience they'd like to have that day and create an affirmation for — Louise L. Hay

The anger subsided, and my shoulders fell. "I know you didn't. But you have got to curb this overprotective big-brother thing you've got going on."
Travis laughed once. "I'm not playing the big brother, Pigeon. Not even close. — Jamie McGuire

There's a song called 'Live Blogging the Himmel Family Bris.' I kind of went for it here in terms of - it was really fun to be explaining ritual circumcision in Nashville - a lot of brises are done in hospitals, but many are done in people's homes, and there's a lot of food, and a lot of leftovers. — Rick Moranis

I had hoped to make her strong and healthy, and now she may be too weak herself after this slow death, like my father's slow long death, to come to me. and I am here, futile, cut off from the ritual of family love and neighborhood and from giving strength and love to my dear brave grandmother's dying whom I loved above thought. and my mother will go, and there is the terror of having no parents, no older seasoned beings, to advise and love me in this world. — Sylvia Plath

Mobile is a seaport town, and we ate a lot of seafood. We'd go fishing, we'd catch our fish and we'd eat our fish. It was a ritual on Saturday morning for all my family - my grandfather, my brothers, my uncles, my father - to go fishing, and then the ladies of the family would clean the fish and fry them up. — Billy Williams

Concerning the limits and limitations of the women's game - why should we believe there are any? — Helen Wills

I know how you love this place, he says to me, apologetically yet with satisfaction. And I don't tell him that I am not sure now whether I love any place, and that it seems to me it was myself I loved here - some self that I have finished with, and none too soon. — Alice Munro

Medicine was just another a tool you could try, no different from a healing ritual or a family remedy and no more effective. — Atul Gawande

We must accept all of God's will for us, not just those portions that happen to appeal and bring instant gratification and pleasure to us. — Rod Parsley

I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained. — Nigella Lawson

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying
valiantly, fruitlessly
to eradicate. — Claire Messud

And I couldn't take my eyes off Pete. He ate dinner like he always did, in three or four huge, whoofing bites, before heading back out front to his cone of warmth, his coffee, his cigarettes, and ghostly tunes piping from his little transistor radio. And most important, to whatever thoughts drowned out the voices of his own family saying "hello" and "happy holidays."
I watched him because I couldn't believe that could be anyone's comfortable horizon. A tiny porch on a dark corner near a highway. We lucked out living on a planet made thrilling by billions of years of chance, catastrophe, miracles, and disaster, and he'd rejected it. You're offered the world every morning when you open your eyes. I was beginning to see Pete as a representative of all the people who shut that out, through cynicism, religion, fear, greed, or ritual. — Patton Oswalt

Without exception, I begin every day of my life with an expression of gratitude. As I look in the mirror to begin my daily ritual of shaving, I say, "Thank you, God, for life, for my body, for my family and loved ones, for this day, and for the opportunity to be of service. Thank you, thank you, thank you! — Wayne W. Dyer

Johanna sat by the fire every night and worked on her tapestry. Dumfries waited until she was settled in her chair and then draped himself across her feet. It became a ritual for Alex to squeeze himself up next to her and fall asleep during her stories about fierce warriors and fair maidens. Johanna's tales all had a unique twist, for none of the heroines she told stories about ever needed to be rescued by their knights in shining armor. More often than not, the fair maidens rescued their knights.
Gabriel couldn't take issue with his wife. She was telling Alex the truth. It was a fact that maidens could rescue mighty, arrogant warriors. Johanna had certainly rescued him from a bleak, cold existence. She'd given him a family and a home. She was his love, his joy, his companion.
She was his saving grace. — Julie Garwood