«The source of most human violence and suffering has been ahidden children's holocaust throughout history, whereby billionsof innocent human beings have been routinely murdered, bound,starved, raped, mutilated, battered and tortured by their parentsand other caregivers, so that they grow up as emotionally crippledadults and become vengeful time bombs who periodically restagetheir early traumas in sacrificial rites called wars.»

«[It] was a secular cathedral, dedicated to the rites of travel.»

«Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong.»

«There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt»

«SCARIFICATION, n. A form of penance practised by the mediaeval pious. The rite was performed, sometimes with a knife, sometimes with a hot iron, but always, says Arsenius Asceticus, acceptably if the penitent spared himself no pain nor harmless disfigurement. Scarification, with other crude penances, has now been superseded by benefaction. The founding of a library or endowment of a university is said to yield to the penitent a sharper and more lasting pain than is conferred by the knife or iron, and is therefore a surer means of grace. There are, however, two grave objections to it as a penitential method: the good that it does and the taint of justice.»

«FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids --always by a Freemason.»

«BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways --by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling.But whether the plan of immersion Is better than simple aspersion Let those immersed And those aspersed Decide by the Authorized Version, And by matching their agues tertian. --G.J.»

«It?s a secret, religious, weird, ceremonial rite of passage for girls that women know. Hopscotch, it was bizarre for boys, ?cause they never played it, and as a boy, I was behind walls, going, ?What- what happened? What did they do? What do they do here?? And they had a track laid out with numbers, mystic numbers- 1, 5? 7, 8, you know? A bit of a broken doll there, some girl keeping lookout with a skipping rope?»

«My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.»