A Quote by Salman Rushdie

Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.

Salman Rushdie

Quote Topics

Before Clumsy Collective Deity Did Error Goodness Individual Lay Lie Out Path Perhaps Rather Ritual Slow Wherever Working

Quote Author

Salman Rushdie
Indian - Novelist
Born: June 19, 1947

The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one's particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. "Lie down, lie down!" the people cried. "The great machine is history!" My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so.

Kurt Vonnegut

Raw, real human conversation can be the most direct path to greater awareness and stronger relationships, even when it's unrehearsed and clumsy-perhaps especially when it's unrehearsed and clumsy!

Beverly L. Kaye

Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.

Anne Sexton

The Tathagatha... is the originator of the path unarisen before, the producer of the path unproduced before, the declarer of the path undeclared before. He is the knower of the path, the discoverer of the path, the one skilled in the path. And his disciplines now dwell following that path and become possessed of it afterwards.

Gautama Buddha

Sanctification is like a clumsy, slow walk rather than a light switch that we turn from off to on.

Edward T Welch

Be persecuted, rather than be a persecutor. Be crucified, rather than be a crucifier. Be treated unjustly, rather than treat anyone unjustly. Be oppressed, rather than be an oppressor. Be gentle rather than zealous. Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.

Isaac of Nineveh

Science advances by trial and error. When mistakes are made, the peer-review publication process usually roots them out. Cuccinelli's version of the scientific process would be "make an error and go to trial." Einstein did not arrive at E=mc2 in his first attempt. If he were working in the state of Virginia under Cuccinelli today, he could be jailed for his initial mistakes and perhaps never achieve that landmark equation.

Scott Mandia

We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual, andis an affair of the individual and the household, a ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of the kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath, and the last.

D. H. Lawrence

My ritual it's kind of an involuntary ritual. I lie awake the night before, worrying about award ceremony. Try and think of something to write in case I actually get up there. I write it at the very last minute like either in the car on the way to the ceremony or, you know, in the bathroom before the show starts. It's all of jumbled mess written on a napkin or a piece of toilet paper. That's my good luck ritual. It's just like being in college waiting for the last minute to do everything.

Tony Shalhoub

On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual.

Erich Fromm

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

John Ruskin

I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.

Lenny Abrahamson

But we must not forget, this ritual expressed, certain ideas which lie at the very root of true religion, the fellowship of the worshippers with one another in their fellowship with the deity, and the consecration of the bonds of kinship as the type of all right ethical relations between man and man.