Formality Quotes

Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality: only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God's child. In each prayer to the Father I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love. 'And ~ Andrew Murray

I'm an American searching for some sort of parameters, a way of life - I'm looking for a slight formality, for a place where you can never be overdressed. ~ Waris Ahluwalia

If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality,if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality. ~ Dalal Gabara

The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. ~ Shusaku Endo

The automatic use of Du, even to strangers if they were friends of friends, was very surprising. Sie, it seemed, meant relegation to the outer darkness and people had been known to fight with swords about the matter. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it! ~ Fumio Obata

In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those employed believe they can never do enough to show their zeal. The result is ... that having passed through one formality does not secure the stranger from another. ~ Marquis De Custine

There's a formality in academia that can't be ignored, even if a man is busy with other things, like trying not to die. ~ Randy Pausch

No matter that they had been together for years, always a feeling of formality when they first saw each other again, even if the separation had been only hours. It had something to do with the attention [he] paid to her – the fact that he never took anyone's return for granted. ~ Tatjana Soli

His arm slid around my shoulders and drew me to him. It was odd, sitting there under the veil of darkness, watching the neighborhood settle down. Lamps burned in windows. TVs flickered. A few houses down, the rhythmic thud of a basketball on concrete and muffled laughter alerted us to the only other people outside on this glorious fall night.

"This is a perfect date," I said.

He tensed. "You'd call it a date?"

"Sure. You wouldn't?"

He looked down at me, his eyes glittering in the faint light. "I thought American girls liked more formality in a date."

"More money is what you mean." I smiled. "It's a date. Don't argue with me."

"I never do. ~ Elizabeth Langston

Now where's this artist?" His eyes darted around the room, landed on Gennie and clung. She thought she saw surprise, quickly veiled, then amusement as quickly suppressed, tug at the corners of his mouth.
"Daniel MacGregor," Grant said with wry formality. "Genvieve Grandeau."
A flicker of recognition ran across Daniel's face before he rose to his rather amazing height and held out his hand. "Welcome."
Gennie's hand was clasped, then enveloped. She had simultaneous impressions of strength, compassion, and stubbornness.
"You have a magnificent home, Mr. MacGregor," she said, studying him candidly. "It suits you."
He gave a great bellow of a laugh that might have shook the windows. "Aye.And three if your paintings hang in the west wing." His eyes slid briefly to Grant's before they came back to hers. "You carry your age well, lass."
She gave him a puzzled look as Grant choked over his Scotch. "Thank you."
"Get the artist a drink," he ordered, then gestured for her to sit in the chair next to his. "Now, tell me why you're wasting your time with a Campbell."
"Gennie happens to be a cousin of mine," Justin said mildly as he sat on the sofa beside his son. "On the aristocratic French side."
"A cousin." Daniel's eys sharpened, then an expression that could only be described as cunning pleasure spread over his face. "Aye,we like to keep things in the family. Grandeau-a good strong name.You've the look of a queen, with a bit of sorceress thro ~ Nora Roberts

One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding. ~ Richard Russo

I am as fond of colorful language as anyone, but I try not to inflict it upon strangers. I suspect many people sense they should have better manners, and need only a nudge. In high school, I was addressed for the first time in my life as "Mister Ebert" by Stanley Hynes, an English teacher, and his formality transformed his classroom into a place where a certain courtliness prevailed. ~ Roger Ebert

Nobody ever died of a feeling, he would say to himself, not believing a word of it, as he sweated his way through the feeling that he was dying of fear. People died of feelings all the time, once they had gone through the formality of materializing them into bullets and bottles and tumours. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

Miracles happen. But prayer is needed! Prayer that is courageous, struggling and persevering, not prayer that is a mere formality. ~ Pope Francis

This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I'm not going to bother you with any of the details--and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer's shoulders by the subordinate's unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncom ~ Neal Stephenson

Monogamy, in brief, kills passion
and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization, which is based upon order, decorum, restraint, formality, industry, regimentation. The civilized man
the ideal civilized man
is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately
when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experiences from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing the armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, reducing the infant death-rate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, and making it possible for the Polizei to know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night. Monogamy accomplishes this, not by producing satiety, but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so gradually kills it. ~ H.L. Mencken

People sometimes think of 'queen' as a title that's shrouded with protocol and formality, and for that reason sometimes people are not easily saying what they want to say. They're reluctant to express their opinions, and I kind of find that frustrating because I want to know what people really, really think. ~ Queen Rania Of Jordan

Liraz may have captured Ziri's soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.
And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too. ~ Laini Taylor

I warn every reader of this [article] to beware of quack medicines in religion. Beware of supposing that penitence, reformation, formality, and priestcraft[40] can ever give you peace with God. They cannot do it. It is not in them. The man who says they can must be ignorant of two things: he cannot know the length and breadth of human sinfulness; he cannot understand the height and depth of the holiness of God. There never breathed the man or woman on earth who tried to cleanse himself from his sins and in so doing obtained relief. ~ Arthur W. Pink

What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh. ~ Steve Martin

Books were an antidepressant, a powerful SSRI. She'd always been one of those girls with socked feet tucked under her, her mouth slightly open in stunned, almost doped-up concentration. All written words danced in a chain for her, creating corresponding images as clear as the boy from Iran's bouncing family. She had learned to read before kindergarten, when she'd first suspected that her parents weren't all that interested in her. Then she'd kept going, plowing through children's books with their predictable anthropomorphism, heading eventually into the strange and beautiful formality of the nineteenth century, and pushing backward and forward into histories of bloody wars, into discussions of God and godlessness. What she responded to most powerfully, sometimes even physically, were novels. Once Greer read Anna Karenina for such a long, unbroken bout that her eyes grew strained and bloodshot, and she had to lie in bed with a washcloth over them as if she herself were a literary heroine from the past. Novels had accompanied her throughout her childhood, that period of protracted isolation, and they would probably do so during whatever lay ahead in adulthood. Regardless of how bad it got at Ryland, she knew that at least she would able to read there, because this was college, and reading was what you did. ~ Meg Wolitzer

An open-minded and diverse population that readily shares information, encourages experimentation, accepts failure and dispenses with formality and hierarchy is what makes Silicon Valley the successful hub that it is. ~ Vivek Wadhwa

Unfaithful in prayer, weak in the working of the Spirit, its witness to Christ a mere formality, and unfaithful to its worldwide mission - such are the marks of a powerless church. ~ Andrew Murray

Certainly not, Jack, and call me Miriam. I've never been one for stiff formality when racing away from violent mobs. ~ Christine Lindsay

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original. ~ Fanny Howe

The sweetness of life lies in dispensing with formalities. ~ Muhammad Ali

If you just live in New York and you only know New York, you know a certain kind of condition of formality and informality. By being able to go to another context and to be able to use that as a counter foil to the context you know, you are about to see a wider range. ~ David Adjaye

Hear ye Hear ye ... ah, fuck it. We're here today for bullshit and we all know it. So let's dispense with the usual formality and get on with this witch hunt before I lose what little grip I still have on my patience. So, Dare Kattalakis state your case and demands to the council. And do it fast, with as few words as possible." Savitar
"First, I want to restate what a travesty it is that my family's seat is taken by
"
"Wah, wah, wah ... quit crying at the tit. Your brother Vane is the head of the Arcadians and Fury leads the Katagaria. Seek a therapist who gives a shit, or if you'd like to challenge either of them for their position, we can do with some entertainment. Hell, I'll make popcorn for the show. Otherwise, Bitch, get on with it." Savitar ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Personally, my interest in social history ends around 1959, by which time I was an adolescent. I've always attributed this to my particular sensibilities. I like formality and elegance, and I'm fundamentally conservative. ~ Laurie Graham

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues. ~ Eric Clapton

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk. ~ Werner Herzog

There is scarcely a town or school in Russia from which boys have not run away to the war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and tried to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volunteers, and several have got through, since the medical examination is only a negligible formality required in one place, forgotten in another. ~ Stephen Graham

Are you calling us pigs?' Froi asked, watching as Rafuel winced for the tenth time at the formality of Froi's Charyn.Rafuel thought for a moment and then nodded.'Actually yes, I am. Pig-like.'Froi turned back to Trevanion and Perri, who were discussing the need for longbow training in the rock village.'What is it?' Perri asked Froi.'He said we eat like pigs.'Trevanion and Perri thought about it for a moment and then went back to their conversation. ~ Melina Marchetta

To dream in doctrines, how tidy! ~ John Le Carre

Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation. ~ Lynne Truss

But this practice [vegetarianism], in which youthful love of austerity finds charm, calls for attentions more complicated than those of culinary refinement itself; and it separates us too much from the common run of men in a function which is nearly always public, and in which either friendship or formality presides. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life. ~ Suzanne Vega

Documentation is not understanding, process is not discipline, formality is not skill. ~ Jim Highsmith

It is amazing how sharing of one's intimate details can make human beings forget the formality of a relationship and bring them closer together. ~ Ruchira Khanna

Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage. ~ Rajneesh

Every member of our Church is a missionary. Without the formality of a setting-apart we should be so set-apart from the ways of the world that we can teach the gospel, which is our Father's way of life, by the very lives we live. ~ William J. Critchlow, Jr.

Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I had no particular problem about getting divorced. For all intents and purposes we already were divorced. And I had no emotional hang up about signing and sealing the official documents. If that's what she wanted, fine. It was a legal formality, nothing more.

But when it came to why, and how, things had turned out this way, the sequence of events was beyond me. I understood, of course, that over time, and as circumstances changed, a couple could grow closer, or move apart. Changes in a person's feelings aren't regulated by custom, logic, or the law. They're fluid, unstable, free to spread their wings and fly away. Like migratory birds have no concept of borders between countries.

But these were all just generalizations, and I couldn't easily grasp the individual case here-that this woman, Yuzu, refused to love this man, me, and chose instead to be loved by someone else. It felt terribly absurd, a horribly ugly way to be treated. There wasn't any anger involved (I think). I mean, what was I supposed to be angry with? What I was feeling was a fundamental numbness. The numbness your heart automatically activates to lessen the awful pain when you want some-body desperately and they reject you. A kind of emotional morphine. ~ Haruki Murakami

Then, with grave formality, he unsheathed his sword.
"How old is that thing? Have you had it carbon dated?"
He looked aghast, as if she'd insulted his grandmother. "Hey, no disrespecting The Sword. Besides, it's only three or four centuries old."
"Only? I would think that technology has improved since then. Why wouldn't you get a new one?"
"I'm on my way to, remember? Try to keep up, halfling. ~ Kresley Cole

Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program, it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. ~ Adam McKay

It is in the very nature of conjugal love to be definitive. The lasting union expressed by the marriage vows is more than a formality or a traditional formula; it is rooted in the natural inclinations of the human person. For believers, it is also a covenant before God that calls for fidelity. ~ Pope Francis

For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.
For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man's love of power. ~ Virginia Woolf

Well, she would marry a man who didn't need or want her fortune. Mr. Pinter didn't fall into that category.
And given how blank his expression became as his gaze met hers, she'd been right to be skeptical. he would never be interested in her in that way.
He confirmed it by saying, with his usual formality, "I doubt any man would consider your ladyship unacceptable as a wife."
Oh, when he turned all hoity-toity, she could just murder him. "Then we agree that the gentlemen in question would find me satisfactory," she said, matching his cold tone. "So I don't see why you assume they'd be unfaithful."
"Some men are unfaithful no matter how beautiful their wives are," Mr. Pinter growled.
He thought her beautiful?
There she went again, reading too much into his words. He was only making a point. "But you have no reason to believe that these gentleman would be. Unless there's some dark secret you already know about them that I do not?"
Glancing away, he muttered a curse under his breath. "No."
"Then here's your chance to find out the truth about their characters. Because I prefer facts to opinions. And I was under the impression that you do, too."
Take that, Mr. Pinter! Hoist by your own petard. The man always insisted on sticking to the facts.
And he was well aware that she'd caught him out, for he scowled, then crossed his arms over his chest. His rather impressive chest, from what she could tell beneath his black coat and plain bu ~ Sabrina Jeffries

For Nautzera there was no present, only the clamour of a harrowing past and the threat of a corresponding future. For Nautzera, the present had receded to a point, had become the precarious fulcrum whereby history leveraged destiny. A mere formality. ~ R. Scott Bakker

polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, ~ Ron Chernow

I should not like to preach to a congregation who all believed as I believe. I would as lief preach to a basket of eggs in their smooth compactness and oval formality. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The kiss was brief and gentle, scarcely more than the formality that concludes a wedding, yet as striking in its impact as though they had this minute plighted a troth. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality? ~ James Madison

House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind. ~ Mary Doria Russell

The world is a merrier place to live if people do things more out of sincerity, not just out of formality. ~ Maggy San Jose-Baas

She arranged the bacon on a platter and then debated what to do with the ten-inch biscuit that had actually been four small biscuits when she'd placed the pan in the oven. Deciding not to break it into irregular chucks, she placed the entire biscuit neatly in the center of the bacon and carried the platter over to the table, were Ian had just seated himself. Returning to the stove, she tried to dig the eggs out of the skillet, but they wouldn't come loose, so she brought the skillet and spatula to the table. "I-I thought you might like to serve," she offered formally, to hide her growing trepidation over the things she had prepared.
"Certainly," Ian replied, accepting the honor with the same grave formality with which she'd offered it: then he looked expectantly at the skillet. "What have we here?" he inquired sociably.
Scrupulously keeping her gaze lowered, Elizabeth sat down across from him. "Eggs," she answered, making an elaborate production of opening her napkin and placing it on her lap. "I'm afraid the yolks broke."
"It doesn't matter."
When he picked up the spatula Elizabeth pinned a bright, optimistic smile on her face and watched as he first tried to lift, and then began trying to pry the eggs from the skillet. "They're stuck," she explained needlessly.
"No, they're bonded," he corrected, but at least he didn't sound angry. After another few moments he finally managed to pry a strip loose, and he placed it on her plate. A few moments more an ~ Judith McNaught

Treat your business relationships like friendships (or potential friendships). Formality puts up walls, and walls don't foster good business relationships. No one is loyal to a wall ... except the one in China. ~ Steve Pavlina

the formality of the presidency, all ~ David McCullough

I Philo, educating yourself was something you had to do in spite if school, not because of it
which is basically why so many of my high school peers are still there in Philo even now, selling one another insurance, drinking supermarket liquor, watching television, awaiting the formality of their first cardiac. ~ David Foster Wallace

In general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

Cotrim, who was present, said:
"Those came who had a genuine interest in you and in us. The eighty would have come only as a formality, would have talked about the inertia of the government, about patent medicines, about the price of real estate, or about each other…"
Damasceno listened in silence, shook his head again, and sighed:
"But they should have at least come. ~ Machado De Assis

The Toddstock thing is the closest thing, I have to say, a Grateful Dead sort of thing where it all lapses over from the formality of a concert into more of a lifestyle thing. ~ Todd Rundgren

If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

A wedding is the formality a man has to go through before going to work for a new boss. ~ Evan Esar

I think most persons who shall have tested it will accept this as the central point of the illumination: That sanity is not the basic quality of intelligence, but is a mere condition which is variable, and like the humming of a wheel, goes up or down the musical gamut according to a physical activity; and that only in sanity is formal or contrasting thought, while the naked life is realized only outside of sanity altogether; and it is the instant contrast of this 'tasteless water of souls' with formal thought as we 'come to that leaves in the patient an astonishment that the awful mystery of Life is at last but a homely and a common thing, and that aside from mere formality the majestic and the absurd are of equal dignity. ~ Benjamin Paul Blood

One of the biggest problems of mathematics is to explain to everyone else what it is all about. The technical trappings of the subject, its symbolism and formality, its baffling terminology, its apparent delight in lengthy calculations: these tend to obscure its real nature. A musician would be horrified if his art were to be summed up as "a lot of tadpoles drawn on a row of lines"; but that"s all that the untrained eye can see in a page of sheet music ... In the same way, the symbolism of mathematics is merely its coded form, not its substance. ~ Ian Stewart

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events. ~ Jane Austen

When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway. ~ Erma Bombeck

This starchy formality is not in vogue today. We carry ourselves in ways that are more natural and relaxed. We worry about appearing artificial. But those in Marshall's military world are more likely to believe that great individuals are made, not born, and that they are made through training. Change happens form the outside in. It is through the exercise of a drill that a person becomes self-regulating. It is through the expression of courtesy that a person becomes polite. It is through the resistance to fear that a person develops courage. It is through the control of facial expressions that one becomes sober. The act precedes the virtue. ~ David Brooks

Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even ... Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity. ~ Susan Sontag

Marriage is like a formality for me. ~ David Copperfield

To my surprise, the more I searched about Qi Xiangfu, the more I found of a life lived partly online. He once wrote a short memoir in which he described himself in the third person, with the formality usually reserved for China's most famous writers. ~ Evan Osnos

There is safety in learning doctrine in gatherings which are sponsored by proper authority. Some members, even some who have made covenants in the temple, are associating with groups of one kind or another which have an element of secrecy about them and which pretend to have some higher source of inspiration concerning the fulfillment of prophecies than do ward or stake leaders or the General Authorities of the Church. Know this: There are counterfeit revelations which, we are warned, "if possible . . . shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant." (JS - M 1:22.) . . .

For the past several years we have watched patterns of reverence and irreverence in the Church. While many are to be highly commended, we are drifting. We have reason to be deeply concerned.

The world grows increasingly noisy. Clothing and grooming and conduct are looser and sloppier and more disheveled. Raucous music, with obscene lyrics blasted through amplifiers while lights flash psychedelic colors, characterizes the drug culture. Variations of these things are gaining wide acceptance and influence over our youth. . . .

This trend to more noise, more excitement, more contention, less restraint, less dignity, less formality is not coincidental nor innocent nor harmless.

The first order issued by a commander mounting a military invasion is the jamming of the channels of communication of those he intends to conquer.

Irreverenc ~ Boyd K. Packer

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event ... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us ... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation. ~ Francine Du Plessix Gray

I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding its time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it. ~ Sara Gruen

In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities. ~ Mark Twain

It is superstitious to put one's hope in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them. ~ Blaise Pascal

The symbol is not a mere formality; it is the very essence of algebra. Without the symbol the object is a human perception and reflects all the phases under which the human senses grasp it; replaced by a symbol the object becomes a complete abstraction, a mere operand subject to certain indicated operations. ~ Tobias Dantzig

Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality ... plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way ... Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered ... the strength [not length] of your prayer ... wins ... God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Just the usual formality before the chaos begins. Like playing the National Anthem before a Cubs game. ~ Berkeley Breathed

Boredom has to be the most life sapping, mental disease you can be afflicted with.The most accurate definition of boredom I have ever heard is this - Boredom is the absence of a creative idea. But there is a simple cure - begin to think immediately of a better way to do something. The creative juices are within you but you must turn on the tap. Those who are bored are not living; they are dying. When their heart stops beating, it will be a mere formality. The best way to do anything has never been thought of. Get on a creative improvement kick and jar others mentally into the same activity. ~ Bob Proctor

My father always has been attractive because of his energy, warmth, charm, and talent for finding some connection with people from all cultures and walks of life. He rarely observed social formalities and niceties - something he has passed on to his boys. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities. ~ Lawrence Lessig

In love afairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child - ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride. ~ Anne Bronte

Both formality and dinner forgotten we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and turned his own memories with their dark side to face the light. And it was late afternoon when, with a headache of happiness, I returned to the ward. And from that day I felt in myself a reserve of warmth from which I could help myself, like coal from the cellar on a winter's day, if the snow came or if the frost fell in the night to blacken the flowers and wither the new fruit. ~ Janet Frame

Preaching that makes a church Christ-like under grace takes a double miracle: the sinful preacher must be shaped by grace to preach; and sinful listeners must be awakened by grace to listen together week by week in humble expectancy. Only God can do this. So praying before the sermon is not a formality. Unless God works, the whole thing will be a waste of time. ~ Christopher Ash

And what did I see? I saw people who are elegant, open-hearted, intelligent; I saw an elder statesman who was kind and attentive to a boy like me; I saw people who are capable of understanding and forgiving, good-natured Russian people, almost as good-natured and warm-hearted as those whom I met back there, almost as good as them. So you may imagine how happily I was surprised! Oh, permit me to say this! I had heard a great deal and was very much of the conviction that in society all is style, all is decrepit formality, while the essence has dried up; but I mean, now I can see for myself that it cannot be so in our country; it may be like that in other countries, but not in ours. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Riley stared at the vest and polo shirt. "Is this necessary?" "Protocol," Wesley said. Riley tugged the shirt over her head and shoved her arms into the vest. "This isn't going to be dangerous, is it? The vest is just a formality, right?" "Right," Emerson said. "There's nothing to worry about." One of the men handed Riley an AR-15 assault rifle. "Just in case," he said. ~ Janet Evanovich

Where are these rational practices to be taught and acquired? Not within the four walls of a bare building, in which formality predominates ... But in the nursery, play-ground, fields, gardens, workshops, manufactures, museums and class-rooms ... The facts collected from all these sources will be concentrated, explained, discussed, made obvious to all, and shown in their direct application to practice in all the business of life. ~ Robert Owen

The sort of formality that goes into my artwork I would not expect from everybody in the world. I'm sort of pushing that point to its limit, in my mind, but I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with using a laptop so long as we have some understanding of how it works a little bit. ~ Tristan Perich

Emily of a warm feeling of pleasure about the request to call.
Don had always just dropped in, indifferent to her convenience. Cab had only taken her to dances. There was a flattering formality, an indication of a genuine wish to get acquainted, about Jed Wakeman's overture. It gratified her.
The ungratifying though occurred that he might be coming just to talk about the Syrians.
"What makes me have ideas like that?" she asked herself. "There's a side of my nature that's always trying to pull me down - the way Don does. Well, I won't allow it! He asked to call because he likes me. And I like him. And I'm glad he's coming. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

We are all members of the same great family ... On social occasions the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail. ~ John A. Lejeune

I like to introduce myself, because THEN I can get in all the facts." The usually self-deprecating John Hay on the ironic formality of signing his own commission as Secretary of State. ~ John Taliaferro

There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie's coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn't drink it. ~ Betty Smith

He went out with a variety of women, slept with some of them, hated the whole meaningless process. Drinks, dinners, plays and concerts and gallery openings ... He grew to despise the rigid formality of dating, missed the easy familiarity of simply being with someone, sharing friendly silences and unforced laughter. ~ Ken Grimwood

I have been giving the best of my advice to this project since 1975. At first I was extremely hopeful. The original objectives of the language included reliability, readability of programs, formality of language definition, and even simplicity. Gradually these objectives have been sacrificed in favor of power, supposedly achieved by a plethora of features and notational conventions, many of them unnecessary and some of them, like exception handling, even dangerous ...
It is not too late! I believe that by careful pruning of the ADA language, it is still possible to select a very powerful subset that would be reliable and efficient in implementation and safe and economic in use. The sponsors of the language have declared unequivocally, however, that there shall be no subsets. This is the strangest paradox of the whole strange project. If you want a language with no subsets, you must make it small. ~ C.A.R. Hoare

Where light leaves the affections behind, it ends in formality and or atheism; where affections outrun light they sink into the bog of superstition, doting on images and pictures or the like. ~ Timothy J. Keller

I am one of the five best parallel parkers in the United States of America. Dead serious. It's to the point now where I look back when pulling into the spot only as a formality. ~ Willie Geist

A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. ~ Suzanne Vega