Best 607 quotes in «mythology quotes» category

The biblical account of the origin of the cosmos in Genesis, for example, posits that a god created the physical universe particularly with human beings in mind, and so unsurprisingly placed the Earth at the center of creation. Modern cosmological knowledge has refuted such an account. We are living in the golden age of cosmology: More has been discovered about the large-scale structure and history of the visible cosmos in the last 20 years than in the whole of prior human history. We now have precise knowledge of the distribution of galaxies and know that ours is nowhere near the center of the universe, just as we know that our planetary system has no privileged place among the billions of such systems in our galaxy and that Earth is not even at the center of our planetary system. We also know that the Big Bang, the beginning of our universe, occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, whereas Earth didn’t even exist until about 10 billion years later. No one looking at the vast extent of the universe and the completely random location of homo sapiens within it (in both space and time) could seriously maintain that the whole thing was intentionally created for us. This realization began with Galileo, and has only intensified ever since.

The bible is history. Remember that it is not a book. It is a library. It contains many kinds of books, letters, songs, and histories, along with the poetry of mythology. We sometimes separate history from mythology, but the bible doesn't. Nor did C. S. Lewis when he wrote, Christianity is myth that is true.

The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin child’s head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered.

The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.

The cavern cracked and groaned. Dirt, rocks, and glow worms rained on their heads. With a wave of panic, Andy swung around and dashed into the next cavern. “Run!” The ceiling collapsed. Behind him, Medusa laughed, her snakes still hissing.

The child's world is alert and alive, governed by rules of response and command, not by physical laws: a portentous continuum of consciousness, endowed with purpose and intent, either resistant or responsive to the child itself. This infantile notion of a world governed by moral rather than physical laws, kept under control by a superordinated parental personality instead of impersonal physical forces, and oriented to the weal and woe of man, is an illusion that dominates men's thoughts all over the world. The sense then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously subjective and objective experience (Participation), which is all alive (Animism), and which was created by a superior being (Artificialism), may be said to constitute the frame of reference of all childhood experience no matter where in the world. No small wonder then, that the above Three Principles are precisely those most represented in the mythologies and religious systems of the whole world.

The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.

The daughter of Sin was determined to go To the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla's god, To the house which those who enter cannot leave, On the road where travelling is one-way only, To the house where those who enter are deprived of light, Where dust is their food, clay their bread. They see no light, they dwell in darkness, They are clothed like birds, with feathers.

the dank night is sweeping down from the sky and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.

The dead must stay dead. That which is dead cannot rise.

The devotee of myth is in a way a philosopher, for myth is made up of things that cause wonder. (Metaphysics, I, 982b 18–19)

The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.

The Dreaming is always; forever... it's always happening, and us mob, we're part of it, all the time, everywhere, and every-when too.

The door opens, and I turn my head, my heart thudding at the sight of Griffin. Tall, broad, muscular but sleek, he stalks into the room like a predator, his gait balanced and sure, his glittering, gray eyes focused entirely on me. Inky hair, a hawkish nose, that stubborn jaw, and thick, black stubble make him look hard and intimidating. With his sword strapped on and his dark brows lowered, he’s a warlord on the prowl. I shiver. I couldn’t want him more.

The Egyptians saw the sun and called him Ra, the Sun God. He rode across the sky in his chariot until it was time to sleep. Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise and poor Ra lost his divinity.

The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicket that they will worship power, might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be.

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

The first thing he did was to attempt to analyse a mental device he was in the habit of resorting to - a device that supplied him with the secret substratum of his whole life. This was a certain trick he had of doing what he called 'sinking into his soul’. This trick had been a furtive custom with him from very early days. In his childhood his mother had often rallied him about it in her light-hearted way, and had applied to these trances, or these fits of absent-mindedness, an amusing but rather indecent nursery name. His father, on the other hand, had encouraged him in these moods, taking them very gravely, and treating him, when under their spell, as if he were a sort of infant magician. It was, however, when staying in his grandmother's house at Weymouth that the word had come to him which he now always used in his own mind to describe these obsessions. It was the word ‘mythology’ ; and he used it entirely in a private sense of his own.

… the greatest mystery, the greatest wonder of creation is that we are capable of both relentless reason and boundless love ... It is not about what we are, but what we can become. – Govinda Shauri

The forest itself has different names in different tongues — Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.

The first time Kiya met Hapi was over a year ago. On that day, she was at the temple - not to sell pigeons and bread as usual, but to pray and offer sacrifices on the altar of Horus - the God of protection.

The great mass of humankind possesses an unmistakable unit-identity. It can be one thing. It can act as a single organism.

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T’ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That’s how I knew I was in the right section.

The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.

The implications of the true story are existential and corrosive to our larger national myth. To understand that the most costly war in this country's history was launched in direct opposition to everything the country claims to be, to understand that this war was the product of centuries of enslavement, which is to see an even longer, more total war, is to alter the accepted conception of America as a beacon of freedom. How does one face this truth or forge a national identity out of it?

The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.

The Hawaiian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe.

...The man who stood before her was taller and stranger than anyone she had ever encountered. His unkempt hair was a long dark brown, partially braided and twisted around twigs, the tips of his pointed ears poking between strands. His bare chest made her flush, but it was completely covered in green inked tattoos. Leather breeches creaked when he shifted. He held his hand out to her, uncurling fingers with long nails. "Aislin," he repeated, his voice gruff and purring, "do not be frightened. I have been waiting so long for you.

The love-goddess gestured to the fish of the lake below her and they gleefully gave up their scales to clothe her in a glimmering gown. The very ends of her toes dangled like cherries over the water as she drifted toward the beach. Even her pointed finger seemed a welcome sight. With a voice that sounded like the wind though roses, she whispered, ‘My boy . . .

The man whirled, his hands still gripping the animal's skin, his face perfectly illuminated by the fire. He was half in shadow, and the shadow revealed him slowly. His left eye was covered by a black leather patch, and thin white scar raked his brow and the cheekbone below. The carried on, down the length of his neck, into the thick black beard, twisting under his collarbone and around his torso. They marred only the skin, I noted, for the muscles beneath were whole and strong, and the entire impression was one of great vitality and energy, strength unbridled. He looked nothing so much as a fallen god working at a trade. "Hephaestus at the forge," I murmured, recalling my mythology....

The Midgard Serpent opened its mouth and swallowed the ox head. The hook dug into the gums of its mouth, and when the serpent felt this, he snapped back so hard that both of Thor’s fists slammed against the gunwale. Thor now became angry and, taking on his divine strength, he strained so hard that both his feet pushed through the bottom of the boat. Using the sea floor to brace himself, he began pulling the serpent up on board. It can be said that no one has seen a more terrifying sight than this: Thor, narrowing his eyes at the serpent, while the serpent spits out poison and stares straight back from below. It is told that the giant Hymir changed colour. He grew pale and feared for his life when he saw the serpent and also the sea rushing in and out of the boat.

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times. . . . But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature.

The moment was all we truly had: a succession of moments, a triumphal march of them, to create a life beyond compare.

The more we prepare for war, the more we make it a reality. Yet, it would seem, to prepare for war may also be the best and possibly the only way to avoid it.’ – Govinda Shauri, The Aryavarta Chronicles - Kurukshetra

The mythology of freedom under capitalism for the average person is a con job.

The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty of terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time.

The name Eve/Eab/Age stems from the Latin aetas, which is from aevum, “lifetime.” The word aetas is remarkably similar to the name Aïdes, i.e. Hades. Eve, you see, is not Adam’s wife but Adam’s father, Zeus bronnton, Zeus “the thunderer/earthshaker,” Poseidon, the fallen — or, better still, suspended, mediating — aspect of God!

The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty or terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time

- The myths are dead. The gods are dead. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms are dead. There is only the State, and the People. - No, Monsieur Robespierre. There is much more than that.

The noise around me blurs, and all I can focus on is his lips and breath and presence.

The nine Greek Muses, awakened again for this generation of man and meant to inspire mankind forward in the sciences and the arts.

The period before the deluge was the one of revelation in the Mesopotamian mythology, when the basis of all later knowledge was laid down. The antediluvian sages were culture-heroes, who brought the arts of civilization to the land. During the time that follows this period, nothing new is invented, the original revelation is only transmitted and unfolded. Oannes and other sages taught all fundations of civilization to antediluvian mankind.

Then on the River I saw the dream-built ship of the god Yoharneth-Lehai, whose great prow lifted grey into the air above the River of Silence. Her timbers were olden dreams dreamed long ago, and poets' fancies made her tall, straight masts, and her rigging was wrought out of the people's hopes. Upon her deck were rowers with dream-made oars, and the rowers were the people of men's fancies, and princes of old story and people who had died, and people who had never been.

The picture of the bacchante who stands motionless and stares into space must have been well known. Catullus is thinking of her when he tells of the abandoned Ariadne, who follows her faithless lover with sorrowing eyes as she stands on the reedy shore ‘like the picture of a maenad.’ Indeed, melancholy silence becomes the sign of women who are possessed by Dionysus. […] Madness dwells in the surge of clanging, shrieking, and pealing sounds, it dwells also in silence. The women who follow Dionysus get their name, maenads, from this madness. Possessed by it, they rush off, whirl madly in circles, or stand still, as if turned to stone.

Then this is for you," Galahad said, and drew a knife from the pouch at his belt. It was an odd little thing, T-hilted and small enough to fit into a woman's hand. Its translucent blade, only an inch and a half long, was bound with scrolling bronze wire to the bone hilt. "Have a care. Obsidian is sharper than anything else in the world, sharp enough to make sunlight bleed.

The pain in my heart was worse than anything I ever imagined. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. All I could feel was the void of her absence growing stronger inside me, and the panic of not ever seeing her eyes open again struck me like an iron whip.

The real cost Of Kurukshetra Was the moment When you disappeared Over the horizon At the end of our universe That moment When you looked back And couldn't see me When I strained my eyes But couldn't see you The monumental Incalculable Cost Of war Was an empty horizon. It always has been, Krishna.

The Real Myth is "We Exist".

There are different kinds of love you experience in life. Loving someone differently doesn't mean loving a person less than you love someone else. Love is love.