Famous quotes containing the words roman, rite and/or mass:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“[T]he Congregational minister in a neighboring town definitely stated that ‘the same spirit which drove the herd of swine into the sea drove the Baptists into the water, and that they were hurried along by the devil until the rite was performed.’”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... in the happy laughter of a theatre audience one can get the most immediate and numerically impressive guarantee that there is nothing in one’s mind which is not familiar to the mass of persons living at the time.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)