# Quote — James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

> If in the present work I have dwelt at some length on the worship of trees, it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its importance in the history of religion, still less because I would deduce from it a whole system of mythology; it is simply because I could not ignore the subject in attempting to explain the significance of a priest who bore the title of King Of the Wood, and one of whose titles to office was the plucking of a bough — the Golden Bough — from a tree in the sacred grove.

- Author: [James George Frazer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer.md)
- Book: [The Golden Bough](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Frazer#The_Golden_Bough_(1890)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/if-in-the

## More from this book

> The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and the immaterial.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/the-notion-that.md)

> Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance...to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man...The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/dwellers-by-the.md)

> With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-george-frazer/the-golden-bough/with-the-advance.md)