Celebration Quotes
More Celebration Quotes
The generation of an infinite number of bogusly 'objective' sentences in an English of agonizing patchwork mediocrity is no cause for celebration, even if it eventually amounts to a Borgesian paraphrase of our entire universe. [...] I liked the internet better before. The mistakes had flavor, passion, transparent purpose.
— Jonathan Lethem, "All-Star Thinkers on Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary", The Atlantic, 13 January 2011
Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.
Richard Bach— There's No Such Place As Far Away (1978)
Every great work of art ... is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.
azar nafisi— Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003).
The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.
— 1951 Letter to a student.
We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.
clive barker— Foreword: Books of Blood 1-3
The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.
daniel day-lewis— Rolling Stone (New York, February 8, 1990)
Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.
nadine gordimer— As quoted at
I don't get this fashion for happy funerals. He said he wanted all his mates to be in a good mood and smile, and this is a very fashionable idea, that when you die, it's supposed to be a celebration and joyous and everyone laughing, but I want people's lives torn apart when I go. I want to be embalmed and brought out when we have guests.
jeremy hardy— The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, October 1998 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 13 June 2006)
There's probably 5000 times more solar energy than the humans will ever need. We could cover our highways with solar collectors to make ribbons of energy, and I think that it's really the largest job creation program in the history of the planet that's in front of us. It's a celebration of the abundance of human creativity combined with the abundance of the natural world.
william mcdonough— "William McDonough: Godfather of Green", WNYC Studio 360 (18 March 2008)
Beliefs seldom become doubts; they become ritual. They become intrinsic parts of the social heritage, themes of public celebration.
— The Puritan Mind (1930) p. 98.
The preceding criticism ... justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.
georges bataille— p. xxxii (On Nietzsche (1945))
Esperando (Cuando Cuba Sea Libre) is probably one of the most personal songs from the new [September, 2007] CD, "90 Millas" . . . as it really speaks about the celebration, nostalgia and emotion that will happen the day Cuba is free. If we're to move forward in Cuba, we really have to have a lot of forgiveness for each other and look towards the future.
gloria estefan— www.gloriaestefan.com (March 28, 2007)
I wrote these two songs ["Coming Out of the Dark" and "Always Tomorrow"] as a celebration of hope. And, I want to send it out to all of those people who are suffering through this terrible disaster [Hurricane Katrina], and please know that you are not alone -- and you will not be.
gloria estefan— Larry King Live television program (September 9, 2005)
By the time we got to Woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration. And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation.
joni mitchell— "Woodstock" (Songs)
Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars.
novalis— As quoted in the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose (1942)
This criticism is ridiculous. The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebration cost me less than the inauguration of each new president of the United States.
muhammad reza pahlavi— As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 284The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebrations of Persian monarchy, taking place on October 12–16, 1971, were estimated to cost 100 million dollars.
Death is only a step towards .../ In this celebration of love/ Death is a stepping stone/ Towards the fullness/ Towards which all of us/ Consciously and unconsciously long for.
kuruvilla pandikattu— Death: Live It! p.92
Village reform is not merely cleaning the roads, constructing schools and worshipping monasteries. It is not mere celebration of festivals.
periyar e. v. ramasamy— Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 513.
Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
— Martha Graham, in "I Am A Dancer" written for the radio program This I Believe, published in This I Believe, Vol. 2 (1952); also in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (1998) by Alexandra Carter and Janet O'Shea, p. 96.
The center of eucharistic spirituality is found, of course, in the communal celebration itself; but private prayer and adoration of the blessed sacrament are an excellent means of personally digesting the immense riches of the actual celebration.
— In P.11 (Theology at the Eucharistic Table: Master Themes in the Theological Tradition (2003))
An integral part of old Bhopal culture are the eunuchs , who are intrinsic to the city’s public spaces and can still be seen roaming the streets and joining every major celebration.
— Jerry Pinto, et al, in “Talk of the Town (2008)”, p. 21
Popular traditions in Benaras, [however], tend to associate with entire month of Kartik with rasa lila episodes. Participants in Kartik puja, the Hindu woman perform on the banks of the Ganges River throughout the month, consider it to be a version of the rasa lila transfigured into a form appropriate for human woman, and enacted each year in celebration of the earthly rasa lila of ancient times.
— Gavin Flood, in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (17 April 2008), p.333
A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.
Paul Sweeney— Irish economist and author
We try to make ourselves worthy of a universe of which we are an infinitesimal part. We will not agree on what worthiness consists of. For the religious naturalist, it is a mix of cautious skepticism and celebration
— Chet Raymo – When God is Gone Everything is Holy, page 126
A wedding is a sacrament... a joyous celebration of love and commitment. In Utopia. In the real world... it's an excuse to drink excessively and say things you shouldn't say.
— "Nick Mercer", The Wedding Date (2005).
Boxing is for men, and is about men, and is men. A celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
joyce carol oates— Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (1987), p. 72
Graduation is a time of completion, of finishing, of an ending, however, it is also a time of celebration of achievement and a beginning for the new graduate.
Catherine Pulsifer— As quoted in Here We Stand: 600 Inspiring Messages from the World's Best Commencement Addresses, by Randy Howe (2009).
Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends , should be an occasion for generous hospitality .
— Julian Baggini, in Think there’s too much excess at Christmas? I can’t get enough of it
