National Holiday Observance

Famous quotes containing the words national, holiday and/or observance:

    The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    With a broad shoehorn
    I am unstuffing a big bird in this dream
    Msomebody else’s holiday feast—
    and repacking the crop of my own,
    knowing it will burst with such
    onion, oyster, savory bread crust.
    Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)

    Ceremony and ritual spring from our heart of hearts: those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.
    F. Gonzalez-Crussi, Mexican professor of pathology, author. “On Embalming,” Notes of an Anatomist (1985)