Barbara Myerhoff famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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[Ritual] dwells in an invisible reality and gives this reality a vocabulary, props, costume, gesture, scenery. Ritual makes things separate, sets them apart from ordinary affairs and thoughts. Rituals need not be solemn, but they are formalized, stylized, extraordinary, and artificial. In the name of ritual, we can do anything. We can do astonishing acts. In the end, ritual gives us assurance about the unification of things.
-- Barbara Myerhoff -
The best lives and stories are made up of minute particulars that somehow are also universal and of use to others as well as oneself.
-- Barbara Myerhoff -
All rituals are paradoxical and dangerous enterprises, the traditional and improvised, the sacred and the secular. Paradoxical because rituals are conspicuously artificial and theatrical, yet designed to suggest the inevitability and absolute truth of their messages. Dangerous because when we are not convinced by a ritual we may become aware of ourselves as having made them up, thence on the paralyzing realization that we have made up all our truths; our ceremonies, our most precious conceptions and convictions - all are mere inventions.
-- Barbara Myerhoff
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We must surrender ourselves so utterly that we can never own ourselves again. We must hand over self and all its rights in an eternal covenant, and give God the absolute right to own us, control us and possess us forever.
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If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they'd get along OK, but they'd both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.â€
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Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
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I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.
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Sensual is being in tune with your sensual self.
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Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
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I'm of Nigerian descent, from the Yoruba tribe. Names are very significant in that culture. It basically states your purpose in life.
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Having a purpose is the little secret of the nonpretties. Something to do always beats something to look at.
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There are so many factors that go into how you feel, as a performer, on any given movie, that it's really hard to identify which things are the things that help you be good, and which are the things that hinder you.
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What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
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