Best 607 quotes in «mythology quotes» category

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.

Aru used to think that friends were there to share your food and keep your secrets and laugh at your jokes while you walked from one classroom to the next. Sometimes, though, the best kind of friend is the one who doesn't say anything but just sits beside you. It's enough.

As for the Economy, this new embodiment as I called it of Fate or the Gods, this global power that governs the lives of Chinese workers in village factories, Brazilian miners, children working cocoa plantations in West Africa, sex workers in Mumbai, real estate salesmen in Connecticut, sheep-farmers in Scotland or on the Darling Downs, disembodied voices in call centres in Bangalore, workers in the hospitality industry in Cancun or Venice or Fiji, keeping them fatefully interconnected, in its mysterious way, by laws that do exist, the experts assure us, though they cannot agree on what they are- it is too impersonal, too implacable for us to live comfortably with, or even to catch hold of and defy. When we were in the hands of the Gods, we had stories that made these distant beings human and brought them close. They got angry, they took our part or turned violently against us. They fell in love with us and behaved badly. They had their own problems and fought with one another, and like us were sometimes foolish. But their interest in us was personal. They watched over us and were concerned though in moments of willfulness or boredom they might also torment us as “wanton boys” do flies. We had our ways of obtaining their help as intermediaries. We could deal with them. The Economy is impersonal. It lacks manageable dimensions. We have discovered no mythology to account for its moods. Our only source of information about it, the Media and their swarm of commentators, bring us “reports,” but these do not help: a possible breakdown in the system, a new crisis, the descent of Greece, or Ireland or Portugal, like Jove’s eagle, of the IMF. We are kept in a state of permanent low-level anxiety broken only by outbreaks of alarm.

Aside from the encounter with the Sphinx, there is little in Oedipus to connect him to the common run of Greek heroic figures. He strikes us today as a modern tragic hero and political animal; it is hard to picture him shaking hands with Heracles or joining the crew of the Argo. many scholars and thinkers, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, have seen in Oedipus a character who works out on stage the tension in Athenians (and all of us) between the reasoning, mathematically literate citizen and the transgressive blood criminal; between the thinking and the instinctual being; between the superego and the id; between the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses that contend within us. Oedipus is a detective who employs all the fields of enquiry of which the Athenians were so proud -- logic, numbers, rhetoric, order and discovery -- only to reveal a truth that is disordered, shameful, transgressive and bestial.

As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection.

As often as we made love I remembered what my poet told me, that this man was born of a goddess, the force that moves the stars and the waves of the sea and couples the animals in the fields in spring, the power of passion, the light of the evening star.

As she left the cold arena Angel had to laugh, Beaten by that of a wisp girl and her subliming cunning craft. —Jove lay silent in his orbit; brooding, deep, dreamless forweep, And faithful dog Sirius rising tracked behind on dusk’s purpling adeep. Scratched he his chin; counted the cold and early evening stars, He had miles to go that night, they being so very far. Only the music of the wint’ring span, Vanished he away in the shimmering land. . . . . . .

As the red-haired female watched, it was obvious she could not process what was happening. It was as though she had never seen anything magical; her fear had her locked in place, unable to move. In her reality, humans didn’t “feed” off of other humans, but the Sluagh were not human. They were demons and ghosts that haunt and invade. They were your darkest fears. The nightmarish creatures were a part of folklore passed down from generation to generation. The Sluagh were in essence rejected by heaven and hell, existing in the human realm only to consume souls. Humans were blinded by the magic that existed in the world. They assumed fairytales were just someone’s wild imagination, creative tales told to delight and frighten children. It was this lack of acknowledgement that made humans the perfect prey for these outcasts.

At its heart, dance is an extension of your soul braided into the music; it’s not a bunch of steps to be memorized. Everyone can dance.

Atlas said, 'Must my future be so heavy?' Hera said, 'That is your present, Atlas. Your future hardens every day, but it is not fixed.' 'How can I escape my fate?' 'You must choose your destiny.

A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.

At the last minute, he broke the rule and he looked. He was so rapt in his view of the light at the end of the tunnel, he got excited, tuned up, he got crazy nervous and for a second he wavered in his confidence and he looked! To confirm or affirm or just firm up,’ students laughing ‘his manly love for her and in that motion of divine stupidity, he killed her dead forever with a glance. Hades ripped her back into his den and that was, proverbially, that.’ A girl across from me says bitterly, ‘No second, second chance for Orpheus.’ ‘He was fucked,’ D continues, nodding. ‘Not because the gods were heartless, but because he fucked up. The guilt of that. Can you imagine? Spent the rest of his pathetic days wallowing, lamenting, composing (or was it decomposing?) heartbreaking tunes upon his lyre, dissolving in grief and music and art, never being the least bit happy or lovable. The saddest sap of all. How do we tell a story like that without being sappy? Oh woe! How do we shape into lines our most harrowing mistakes and losses without drenching them in sticky poetic sap?

A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman. The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names--Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live.

A world without fairy tales and myths would be as drab as life without music

Bah, he still saw the same stupidity. The image of the hanged man in the farming community of Yondern flashed through his mind. Now there was a war brewing between the Steelwielders and some foreign religion. More mindless loss over beliefs and mythology. But.. he could not deny the noble features in his companions. Although Perfidian was too blithe and Elaina too didactic, they had risked their life to do what was right. He did owe them his life. He could not deny the nobility he saw in many different people, bits and pieces of nobility that shined through under pressure. The guards who risked their lives to protect the villagers, Markham who flew at the dangerous dwarf, swords flashing; even an Eruthian merchant who stopped in his journey to share tales with complete strangers'.

Beautiful people never lie.

Because I know you live on the hope of seeing a better tomorrow, unlike the skeptics who have nothing to live for today. I would rather die with hope, than to live without any hope at all.

Because the creator of all the worlds cannot be a participant in worldly matters. Gods are the detached operators of the contents of this Universe- the Brahmand; which consists of twenty Lokas: Six are above the Prithivi, the mother Earth and they ago by the name - Jan, Tap, Satyam, Mah, Swa, Bhuv. A total of seven Lokas, including our earth - Prithivi Lok. Then there are fourteen Lokas below the Earth, of which seven are the Naraks, meaning hells and they go by the name of; Aveech, Mahakal, Ambrish, Rorav, Maharorav, Mahasutra and Andhatamisr. Above them are the seven Patal Lokas below the earth namely- Mahatal, Rasatal, Atal, Sutal, Vital, Talatal and the Patal.

Bedtime tales, myths, legends, fairy tales, lie the lessons and examples of what a Goddess would do.

Before accepting your guess just based on how you feel, let's admit we just don't know, and discover if it's real.

Before the day there was only endless night. When the stars rained down from the skies, and giants and other unfathomable creatures roamed the land, there was a goddess who ruled over them all because she had been clever enough to figure out the secret of time and how to walk between worlds.

Blanchefleur felt a quick rush of affection for her. When the world frowned, Branwen went on smiling. There was a heart of steel under all that froth and bubble.

But are they heroes or mere dreamers?

But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.

But the queen--too long she has suffered the pain of love, hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood, consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [...] His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling-- no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.

But what else are secrets for if not discovery? That is their nature. Only time stands between a mystery and its rightful master.

But you mark my words: I will be there when everything you love is destroyed. Everything you didn't even believe you would have.

But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?

Can you please tell me who you people are?" "Criminals. Offenders. Monsters. We've all been imprisoned in Tartarus for discretions committed against the gods of Olympus." ~ Hope/Daedalus, The River Styx

Cecie keeps telling him she’d like to take him home some night, husband or no. The Minotaur waits hopefully. Husband or no.

Charm me into giving you the red M&Ms. They’re my favorite.' I looked Hades in the eyes. 'Give me the red M&Ms.' 'Still not good enough.' 'Give me the damn M&Ms,"'I snapped. He snickered. 'That wasn’t very charming.

Corvid looked up at her. "Oh, hello Doris." "Gertie, dear," she said. "They call me Gertie." "You used to be Doris," Corvid said as a matter of fact. "Who?" She seemed unsure of what she was being told. "Doris, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys?" Corvid carried on when he saw her blank expression. "You must remember Nereus? Your husband?" Nothing. "You gave birth to fifty sea nymphs. I guess sea nymphs come out slippy and hydrodynamic, but even so, fifty of them? That must stick in the memory as the day before you felt really sore for a month or so?" Doris thought about it for a moment. "It does ring a bell. Sorry, who are you?

Dance with me.

Deeply entrenched fantasies and persistent, most cherished illusions can at least partly be explained as ‘bugs’ or ‘viruses’ in, or ‘mis-activations’ of, our sophisticated and highly sensitive intellectual software, which is driven but also easily disrupted by, and addicted to, our restless and insatiable need for meaning, order, control, and reassurance.

DE ONTDEKKING Wij leefden eertijds, grazend als de dieren, in een stil dal tussen de duinen in, spelende met het licht en bruiloft vierend, beschut tegen het raadsel van de wind. Maar wie van ons ’t ruisen der zee vernamen, wilden haar zien, stegen een duin ten t op, tuurden tot aan de kim en nieuwe namen vielen hen in. Sindsdien gaan zij rechtop. Het duin noemen zij zeewering, de stilte ontdekten zij als een zwijgend geluid. Het komt hun voor als liep een god op vilten zolen hun dal onzichtbaar in en uit.

Do I look like I want to be involved in your teen love saga? Ask someone who cares.

Elsewhere Lankford reiterates that this belief system was by no means confined to the Plains, the Eastern Woodlands, and the Mississippi Valley. It is better understood, he argues, as part of 'a widespread religious pattern' found right across North America and 'more powerful than the tendency towards cultural diversity.' Indeed, what the evidence suggests is the former existence of 'an ancient North American international religion ... a common ethnoastronomy ... and a common mythology. Such a multicultural reality hints provocatively at more common knowledge which lay behind the façade of cultural diversity united by international trade networks. One likely possibility of a conceptual realm in which that common knowledge became focused is mortuary belief [and] ... the symbolism surrounding death.

Even Cronus, the Titan who literally had his kids for breakfast, would find these facts hard to swallow.

Every fact is a myth until proven to be otherwise.

Every hero is scared. That-s what being brave is about - confronting fear.

Evil people can still keep promises. Many have done just that, girl, though they are usually not promises you ‘rational’ people wish them to keep.

Far, far out on the open sea a platform of stone held firm against the tossing waves. At first sight, it appeared as nothing out of the ordinary, other than that it lay in the middle of nowhere. That was the view on the surface. Beneath the water existed an entirely alien world.

Fear is a constant, and faith is a choice. Fear comes from karma, from faith arises dharma.

For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as a birthplace of Ram. But the exact location is a subject of dispute and political turmoil. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more structured, more homogenous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. What used to be once a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts have to intervene

For too long now divinity and destiny have legitimized what reason and compassion would not. An individual for a family, a family for the kingdom, a kingdom for an empire... And now – an empire for humanity. – Govinda Shauri

From The Ghost Wars- on the concept of the Torah as ancient science fiction. “Take the story of the fall of the tower of Babel. Let’s say this represents not an act of God, nor a metaphor for this planet’s diverse linguistic heritage; but a catastrophic act of terrorism by the Divisionists to sever mankind from the neural net. The internet in this situation becomes mankind’s attempt to build a physical replacement for a natural ability long lost. Think of it as a wooden leg or a pacemaker.

Gawain laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sir Perceval, when the priest reads the lesson, he says that he who would save his life must lose it. Good words for any man, for there are moments when cowardice will bring death more surely than boldness. But the ordinary man knows, when he goes out to meet the wolf in his road, that he may yet come home in peace. Not so the knights of the Round Table. We win through one deadly peril only to face another. If we banish one evil, we must go on to the next and after that, to the next—until death meets us in the path. We yield up our bodies every day, not for glory and fortune but so that those weaker than ourselves may live. Do you understand?” “I do,” said Sir Perceval. “And I say that there is no nobler calling. I am content.” But then he thought of the Lady Blanchefleur kissing his brow on a night of fire and blood, and with a sudden ache of grief told himself that even a hundred years of peace would not be enough time to spend with her.

[Hades] returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. 'Orpheus...Dusk...Orpheus...Dusk...do you have anything on here that doesn't make people want to jump off a cliff?' ... 'I'm driving. When you learn to drive something more modern than a horse and buggy, we can listen to your music.' 'I can drive!' 'Did they even have cars the last time you can to the surface?' I teased. 'Yes.' 'Not counting the minute and a half you spent rescuing me last year?' Hades fell silent, and I laughed. 'I didn't think so.

Harpies, n. A disease transmitted to humans by birds with human faces.

Have I cheated death again? Hades must be allergic to me.