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)

    Where there is no vision, the people perish.
    Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 29:18.

    President John F. Kennedy quoted this passage on the eve of his assassination in Dallas, Texas; recorded in Theodore C. Sorenson’s biography, Kennedy, Epilogue (1965)