What is commencement ceremony?

Famous quotes containing the words commencement and/or ceremony:

    [T]he late Samuel McChord Crothers, genial wit and essayist, ... after listening to the speeches at a certain Harvard Commencement remarked that he gathered that the world had been in great danger, but that all would now be well.
    —For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)