Best 472 quotes in «myth quotes» category

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

Myth is what we call other people's religion.

Myths remind us of the symbolic presence within all the lost-and-found adventures that alone can give life meaning. Losing touch with the world of myth means losing the sense that life is deeply meaningful, full of meanings trying to be revealed at each twist and turn in the ongoing drama.

Mythic imagination can break the spell of time and open us to a level of life that remains timeless. Myth is not about what happened in past times; myth is about what happens to people all of the time.

Myth offers a third place to stand or a third way to see when we find ourselves caught between opposing ideas and hardening ideologies.

Myth and nature are the two great garments of the world, with nature being the living green garment that covers the planet and myth being the multidimensional, many-colored fabric that continually weaves human culture.

Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world.

Mythology didn't cease to exist and be useful to Pagans when we gained digital watch technology.

Myths grew from the ancient tradition of passing on knowledge orally, the only means of doing so before writing. They’re narratives of human existence. They helped our ancestors interpret reality, solve problems, and guided social behavior. They structured natural and social information into patterns using symbols, and embedded fact into story form. This increased their impact, making information meaningful and personally involving—not just cold, detached facts.

Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.

Myth is a past with a future, exercising itself in the present.

Myths are not to be despised, but reading them literally is not to be recommended.

Myth is a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze.

Myth is ancient science; science is modern myth.

Myth is not about whether something is fact or fiction; myth is more about truth. Good myth, according to the old adage, is about something that continues to be true again and again, over time.

Mythology was never designed to describe historically verifiable events that actually happened. It was an attempt to express their inner significance or to draw attention to realities that were too elusive to be discussed in a logically coherent way.

Myths have a way of bringing what is unconscious to the surface and putting a face on what we cannot see.

Never interrupt a faerie circle ceremony. And, if a faerie has appeared to you, visually, do not speak to it until it has spoken to you. These two transgressions are considered so rude, that the faeries may literally attack you, on the spot.

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.

Nothing could have been less in line with contemporary conceptions of art than that the theatre should be divorced from all relation to life and politics. Greek tragedy was in the strictest sense ‘political drama’; the finale of Eumenides, with its fervent prayers for the prosperity of the Attic state, betrays the main purpose of the piece. This political control of the theatre brought back to currency the old view that the poet is guardian of a higher truth and an educator who leads his people up to a higher plane of humanity. Through the performance of tragedies on the state-ordained festivals and the circumstances that tragedy came to be looked upon as the authoritative interpretation of the national myths, the poet once more attains to a position almost equivalent to that of the priestly seer of prehistoric times.

Not that I can think of. In fact, I have never met anyone who didn’t like gargoyles.

Now, I pray you, cast yourself into a different world, a different trail of thought; step into a place where dragons live and breathe, where they are as real in touch and voice as you or I. Where they face the same extinction every day that they have suffered in our world: the extinction of myth . . . yet where they battle every moment to fend off such a fate for another day . . .

One finds the same basic mythological themes in all the religions of the world, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, from the North American plains to European forests to Polynesian atolls. The imagery of myth is a language, a lingua franca that expresses something basic about our deepest humanity. It is variously inflected in its various provinces.

Only god can save our nation? No sir that is a myth!!!

Only the victor gets to write history; where half of the facts are distorted and the other half invented.

On the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realized the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. The chalk country-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downloads held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realized that these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness.

Other dragons are bastards. I moved out of my mother's cave after my mother tried to rip my guts out. Granted, I had tried to steal her Tiara of Clairvoyance.

Our myths, our legends, aren't necessarily true, but they are truly necessary.

Până și lectura are o funcție mitologică, nu numai pentru că înlocuiește rostirea miturilor în societățile arhaice și literatura orală, care se mai păstrează în comunitățile rurale din Europa, ci mai ales pentru că îi permite omului midern o „ieșire din timp”, asemănătoare cu cea înlesnită de mituri (...) omul modern este proiectat, prin lectură, în afara duratei sale personale și integrat altor ritmuri, trăind într-o altă „istorie”.

People need foundation myths, some imprint of year zero, a bolt that secures the scaffolding that in turn holds fast the entire architecture of reality, of time: memory-chambers and oblivion-cellars, walls between eras, hallways that sweep us on towards the end-days and the coming whatever-it-is. We see things shroudedly, as through a veil, an over-pixellated screen. When the shapeless plasma takes on form and resolution, like a fish approaching us through murky waters or an image looming into view from noxious liquid in a darkroom, when it begins to coalesce into a figure that's discernible, if ciphered, we can say: This is it, stirring, looming even if it isn't really, if it's all just ink-blots.

Perfect sanity is a myth propagated by straitjacket salesmen.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a story of a certain kind. The myths of a culture are those stories it takes seriously—the ones that are thought to be a key to its identity.

Nothing holds back human progress as frequently as the misbelief that the words ‘impossible’ and ‘improbable’ are synonyms.

Nothing is more difficult than competing with myth

One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn’t the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words “fairy tale” or “myth” for “fantasy,” the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn’t utilize the same tools. [from the interview Year’s Best 2012: Charles de Lint on “A Tangle of Green Men”]

One of the misconceptions about atheism is that it somehow means someone denies the possibility of a deity. In all actuality, it simply means you don’t believe it to be the case — a point that should not be hard to understand with the complete lack of physical evidence that points to the existence of such a being or beings. Even if you’re 51 percent sure that there is no magical man in the sky, you are an atheist; and admitting that is the first half of the battle.

One South Carolinian who grew up early in the twentieth century “did not learn that the South had lost the war until he was twelve years old. ‘It was one of the saddest awakenings I ever had,’” he recalled. Similarly, Margaret Mitchell remembered that she “heard so much about the fighting and hard times after the war that I firmly believed Mother and Father had been through it all instead of being born long afterward.” [141—42]

[On Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP, as reviewed in The Prague Post:] Mashak amalgamates various national, historical and religious traditions into a myth-mash that illuminates many sects' fanatical compartmentalizing, and the fact that so many religions and philosophies share similar goals, if not roots.

Orgasms are a myth. Like good credit scores.

People add color to their story because they think it happened in black and white.

Reason. It is no more reliable a tool than instinct, myth or dream. But it has the potential to be far more dangerous...

Regardless of the fact that the express purpose of God's Deluge is to kill off most of mankind--apart, of course, from Noah and his descendants--there is talk of the need to: 'heal the earth which the angels have corrupted ... that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things which the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons.' [...] From such admonishments we may reasonably deduce a number of things about the Watchers, most particularly that they must be about the right size and shape, and equipped, moreover, with the necessary organs and impulses to want, to have and to enjoy sex with human women. To me, the obvious conclusion from this is that the Watchers are in fact human, or at any rate extremely closely related at the genetic level to anatomically modern human beings--close enough, indeed, to make human women pregnant and to have "children of fornication" with them. These offspring are not sickly as one might expect from an even slightly mismatched genetic makeup. On the contrary, they thrive so vigorously that Enoch, or the "good" angels speaking through him, want not only to destroy the Watchers but also to 'destroy the children of the Watchers.' [...] So now further clarity begins to emerge. A group of bad angels, "Watchers of the heaven," have come to earth--"descended," specifically, on Mount Hermon in Lebanon--transferred some technology, mated with human females, and produced offspring who are in some way gigantic and are called Nephilim.

Rites–of–passage stories…were cherished in pre–literate societies not only for their entertainment value, but also as mythic tools to prepare young men and women for life’s ordeals. A wealth of such stories can be found marking each major transition in the human life cycle: puberty, marriage, childbirth, menopause, death. Other rites–of–passage, less predictable but equally transformative, include times of sudden change and calamity such as illness and injury, the loss of one’s home, the death of a loved one, etc. These are the times when we wake, like Dante, to find ourselves in a deep, dark wood — an image that in Jungian psychology represents an inward journey. Rites–of–passage tales point to the hidden roads that lead out of the dark again — and remind us that at the end of the journey we’re not the same person as when we started. Ascending from the Netherworld (that grey landscape of illness, grief, depression, or despair), we are ‘twice–born’ in our return to life, carrying seeds — new wisdom, ideas, creativity and fecundity of spirit.

Requiems for the Departed contains seventeen short stories, inspired by Irish mythology, from some of the finest contemporary writers in the business.

Rest you here, enchanter, while the light fades, Vision narrows, and the far Sky-edge is gone with the sun. Be content with the small spark Of the coal, the smell Of food, and the breath Of frost beyond the shut door. Home is here, and familiar things; A cup, a wooden bowl, a blanket, Prayer, a gift for the god, and sleep. (And music, says the harp, And music.) Rest here, enchanter, while the fire dies. In a breath, in an eyelid's fall, You will see them, the dreams; The sword and the young king, The white horse and the running water, The lit lamp and the boy smiling. Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone with the harp's echo when the strings Fall mute; with the flame's shadow when the fire Dies. Be still, and listen. Far on the black air Blows the great wind, rises The running tide, flows the clear river. Listen, enchanter, hear Through the black air and the singing air The music….

Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness. The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive.

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

Scientists are wont to assume that myths and God-ideas are creations of primitive man, and that as spiritual culture “advances”, this myth-forming power is shed. In reality it is the exact opposite, … this ability of a soul to fill its world with shapes, traits and symbols - like and consistent amongst themselves - belongs most definitely not to the world-age of the primitives but exclusively to the springtimes of great Cultures. Every myth of the great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. It is the first formative act of that spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There - it must be.

Seeing myself through the eyes of a projection, however uncomfortable the judgment, made me feel safe in a strange way. It was like a box in which to live: a boundary against the greater nothingness, to think one knew something about what others thought of you. It was there I could begin and end, but it was also a relief. This is why the Greeks needed myth: for that boundary, to know where they stood amidst the infinite. No one can simply coexist with the ocean, storms, or cypress trees. They had to codify the elements with language and greater meaning, and create gods out of them–gods who looked suspiciously like themselves–so that even if they were powerless over nature, there were better versions of them in control.