Liminality/rites of Passage

Famous quotes containing the words rites and/or passage:

    As if the musicians did not so much play the little phrase as execute the rites required by it to appear, and they proceeded to the necessary incantations to obtain and prolong for a few instants the miracle of its evocation, Swann, who could no more see the phrase than if it belonged to an ultraviolet world ... Swann felt it as a presence, as a protective goddess and a confidante to his love, who to arrive to him ... had clothed the disguise of this sonorous appearance.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.
    Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)