Ceremony

A ceremony is an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion.

Quotes

your assemblies are a stench to me.

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,

I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs!

I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a never-failing stream!

All men promiscuously do homage to God, but very few truly reverence him. On all hands there is abundance of ostentatious ceremonies, but sincerity of heart is rare.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 2

what are they to me?” says the Lord.

“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,

of rams and the fat of fattened animals; ...

Your incense is detestable to me. ...

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.

Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

I hate with all my being. ...

Your hands are full of blood! ...

Stop doing wrong.

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed."

What infinite heart's ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy?
And what have kings that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 253.

What art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 257.

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 261.

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony,
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act IV, scene 2, line 20.

To feed were best at home;
From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;
Meeting were bare without it.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 4, line 36.

Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
- William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 2, line 15.

I discover that hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
- Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion : An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918), Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting".

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