Best 607 quotes in «mythology quotes» category

The story is that Odin travelled from home and came to a place where nine slaves were cutting hay. He asked if they wanted him to sharpen their scythes. They agreed. Then he took a whetstone from his belt and sharpened the scythes. To them it seemed that the scythes now cut much better, and they wanted to buy the whetstone. Odin set this price on the stone: he asked that whoever wanted to buy it should give what he thought was reasonable. They all said they wanted it and each asked to buy it, but instead he threw it into the air. They all scrambled to catch it with the result that they slit each other’s throats with their scythes.

The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness the unbelievable: for there before him stood the legendary creature, startling white, that had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes. The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a body wrought of finest ivory. And as he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight. High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign of his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait. The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth, whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly: he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose. His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure, reflecting vistas and events long vanished, and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.

The unknown grayish mystifying forest was benumbed into frost-covered cold, and the tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods no one had ever heard of outside of the world of secret occult visions.

The Valkyrie’s heart was wrought of dazzling gold full of the most finest and firmest of loves, this being the secret of her many moods and akimbo inspirangular mercies. —On Kari, Ch. Fifteen Valley of the Damned

The visage of Lucifer mushroomed into hideousness above the cloudbank, rising slowly like some titan climbing to its feet after ages of imprisonment in the Earth.

The voice blurs and fades, like a faint cry riding on the tails of the wind. I yawn and stretch, rolling over. I fold my pillow under my head and wait for the voice to return. When I hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing I allow myself to drift back into a dreamless slumber.

The Wheel of Time spins: there is beginning and there is end. But why does the Wheel of Time spin? Is it some divine force that propels it? Or is that force humanity, people in search of change and a better way of life? – Asvattama Bharadvaja

The word "myth" can be most appropriately and simply defined as a story intended to convey some kind of timeless, sacred truth. Why use a story, instead of some other means, to convey what are perceived to be timeless, sacred truths? Stories engage more - and arguably deeper - parts of ourselves than bare, conceptual discourse usually does. They're more entertaining, and they can be more emotionally moving. They're not necessarily irrational - especially when one understands the basic assumptions of the worldview out of which they spring - but they are generally nonrational. They don't necessarily contradict a particular rational understanding of the world, but they're not concerned with the rational validity or lack thereof in what they purport to describe. They bypass reason altogether, for better or for worse. Rather than stating an idea and then arguing for why that is an accurate reflection of reality, stories go straight to the example, depicting the cosmos as seen through the lens of the idea. They show rather than tell. These factors make stories more persuasive than rational argument, for most people and as a general rule, which is most if not all societies have entrusted their core beliefs to myth more often than to rational argument.

They rode through the quiet streets. The rain had stopped and an early morning mist fell around them under the streetlights. Victor remembered that his ancestors had believed this was a magical time when the gods walked the earth, Götterdämmerung, a time when men slept and divine creatures laid plans that ensnared or released them. He was not such a creature, no; he had to walk step by step on the hard earth beneath his feet and watch tragedies unfold, without shaping them. It was a disappointment to him.

This coming from the god who zinged Guinevere and Lancelot while King Arthur was away slaying dragons.

Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. True, the writer may have been alone also with Spenser's golden apples in the Faerie Queene, Proserpina's garden, glistening bright among the place's ashes and cinders, may have seen in his mind's eye, apple of his eye, the golden fruit of the Primavera, may have seen Paradise Lost, in the garden where Eve recalled Pomona and Proserpina. He was alone when he wrote and he was not alone then, all these voices sang, the same words, golden apples, different words in different places, an Irish castle, un unseen cottage, elastic-walled and grey round blind eyes.

They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)

They were working hard at their own myth.

This killing of his 'mythology' how could he survive it? His 'mythology' had been his escape from life, his escape into a world where machinery could not reach him, his escape into a deep, green, lovely world where thoughts unfolded themselves like large, beautiful leaves growing out of fathoms of blue-green water!

This is wrong. Out of this world wrong. But then again, so am I.

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.

Thor has been banished from Scandinavia, Ra's sun has set in Egypt and Zeus lies buried in the snow at Mount Olympus. But the myths of lord Ram reign strong India, Lord Krishna has not ceasrd to dance in out hearts.

Those movies... ridiculously inaccurate. The real gods of Asgard — Thor, Loki, Odin, and the rest — are much more powerful, much more terrifying than anything Hollywood could concoct.

To some, you are a way to the light and to others you will be their true destruction.

Tko npr. formulira govor o Bogu Abrahamovu, Izakovu i Jakovljevu tako da se u njemu više ne čuje Jobov uzdisaj i tužaljka 'Ta dokle još?', taj se ne bavi teologijom nego mitologijom.

Tonight I will take back what is mine.

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness.

Time slipped and slid around him, unanchored by any fact that could be verified. Perhaps it did not matter. 'Where does our story take place, and when?' asked Cocteau at the start of Orphée. 'It's the privilege of legends to be ageless. Comme il vous plaira. As you please.

*to thor* Zeus had replied that he had pulled fluffballs of lint out of his bellybutton that were bigger than Asgard

Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. “Why so hostile, love?” “You whacked me on the head with a ball!” “You deserved it.

Unlike the ancients, modern man does not see Mother Earth as some kind of goddess like Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life in Greek mythology. He has de–mythicized her, reduced her to an object, a specimen, to be studied by scientists and exploited by corporations for profit.

unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

Upon Hirotsugu’s birth, the Fujiwara clan made great plans for his future, and I watched from my throne of skulls behind the kagerō veil and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.” Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.

Vila the White, Built a City up height, Not in the Heavens, not on the ground, But on the edge of a Cloud, Vila the White, Put defenses the bright: Gold defends the heights, Sun defends the gate, Moon defends the City when it's late, Vila the White, Stood with Sun at sight, Watching what comes from the bay, And saw Lightning and Thunder play, Vila the White, Wed her son on Moon at night, And gave her daughter to Gold, as bride, They have couple brothers, she's their brother's wife.

Trust my folly then, since it is best for a man truly wise to be thought a fool.

Ugh! She cursed her lack of attention to the [mythology] reading. Who could have known that would be the important class?

Unicorns aren't magical and beautiful. They're just predatory horses that have horns and love to eat virgins.

Vanessa’s scream of terror pierced the air, while the pegasi flapped their wings and whinnied. Andy looked to the sky. A flock of giant ebony swans flew toward the clearing, visible just beyond the tall trees. Their shiny feathers shifted between black and silver in the sunlight. Their beaks were a dull bronze, their red eyes gleaming with malice. Together they let out a screech, and the trees shook. Spencer’s jaw dropped. “That’s them. The Stymphalian Birds.

Wait a minute, hold on... The dude dies, and the girl cries so hard that she gets turned into a fountain?

We all wrap ourselves in the mythology we want other people to see us in.

We fell in love with that little peep-show projection on the inside of an iris, pictures that amount to nothing more than the thirsty moon over a spot of bloody ground. Those weren’t the nothings we restless sleepwalkers knew, no place no home no song. So we heard her and we followed until she went where we couldn't follow. She went down beyond the mountains and disappeared between the crease of sky and land, like a great eyelid folding shut. No one knows what happened out in the Black Hills, but I imagine she lies buried in a rusty coffin under the stars. And on nights when the desert crickets sing her tune, they say one day she will rise again. On that day, there is no telling the kind of vengeance she'll demand of us. Fair is fair. They say when she fell from Heaven she wore a crown of jagged stars that slit the skies throat. They say she loved them all, in the secret corners of their shallow sleep. Strangers, at the last. They say a lot of things. They’re all lies. Everything is already written.

We are at war. There will be scars. – Uttara Vairati

We came upon a massacre at the Shrine of Prometheus. The humans were ripped to shreds. There was no one ieft alive to say what happened, said Eros.

...we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of 'hearth and home'. The word 'hearth' shares its ancestry with 'heart', just as the modern Greek for 'hearth' is kardia, which also means 'heart'. In Ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in economics and ecology. The Latin for hearth is focus - with speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of the words for fireplace we have spun "cardiologist', 'deep focus' and 'eco-warrior'. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.

We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy own, no gift peculiarly thine, that thou mayest feel as thine own, have as thine own, possess as thine own, the seat, the form, the gifts which thou thyself shalt desire. A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou will fix the limits of nature for thyself. I have placed thee at the centre of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honourable, art the molder and maker of thyself.

We hold this myth to be potential Not self-evident but equational Another Dimension Of another kind of Living Life

We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value

We don’t change our minds. I was led to another path of light.

We're two fools, you know," he said, looking into her eyes. "I don't remember the moment I fell in love with you, but I breathe it in every minute, every day.

Well, can you tell her that?" He looked down at his feet. "I will. I will." Guy-speak for, "I plan to keep avoiding her until she gives up.

Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power?

Well, it’s probably a good thing Anubis didn’t kiss me. I would have died all over again.

We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.