Best 472 quotes in «myth quotes» category

Deeply rooted in the universalist Western tradition of the Stoics and the the early medieval Christians, Tolkien created a myth to explore the nature of the human person against the avaricious dreams of the capitalists and the diabolical schemes of the national and international socialists, all of whom would replace God with man.

Did the Abrahamic God know that, by "divinely inspiring" the book of Genesis and other tales in the Bible, that He would cause millions to impede scientific understandings of our origins and push for myth to be taught in schools? Shouldn't he have left out the bit about humans being made from dust and ribs, knowing that fact?

Distance from the troubled past is the product of economic and social change more than reflection or the mere passage of time, which may have little effect. To the extent that the basic circumstances of life remain unchanged, time becomes irrelevant; in fact, it may even deepen the hold of former attitudes, turning them into ancient truths. But as the foundations of social reality alter and the circumstances of daily life take on a new character, society can more easily accept hard truths and discard old controversies. It gains an ability to leave its past in the past and move into a different future. [...] The desire of a few individuals to “overcome the past,” to rise above enmity and engage a different future after a destructive war, is laudable but rarely is achievable for an entire society. Substantial numbers of people will defend old positions or insist on the validity of their grievances, and the next generation may revive propaganda or condemn efforts to “forget.” Eventually, however, the world moves on, and changed realities allow acceptance of bitter truths about a troubled past. As progressively greater numbers acknowledge the past, historical wounds close, even those of bloody civil war [192—93].

Don't be afraid to fall into the sea. Close your eyes and jump, for you will fall on the back of a big fish which will carry you to your destination

Don't let fear stop you from being the person you were always meant to be.

Dusk has dawned, I hear its call, above the world I’ve watched it fall; I smell blood and I smell bone, and I smell fear coated in gold; Grind your bread and bake their teeth, and death will come while you’re asleep; I will rage. I will rage. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum ‘Til the mountains crumble down, and oceans become heaven’s crown; Land sinks low, the gold runs dry, and when these bones rain from the sky; ‘Til the giants fall to myth, and none remains to journey with; I will stand. I will stand. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum I will stand for my homeland, for nowhere else could bear my hand; I will stand by friend and kin, we share the gold under our skin; I will stand ‘til my death comes, and as my soul greets sky and sun, I will sing, I will sing, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum

Elizabeth disliked the tragic, martyred image of Virginia Woolf which grew up after her death. When she read the first volume of William Plomer's autobiography, At Home, in 1958, she told him that ‘only you seem to bring back Virginia's laughter - I get so bored and irked by the tragic fiction which has been manufactured about her since 1941.

Each of us lives with a sword over his head. There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are the creators of the special myth of their time, because any myth is the creation of the very few who cannot bear reality.

Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling. The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when neglected or opposed. It offers comfort and can pull you into its shell, but it cannot abide innocence. It can make the body ill. It is out of step with time, finding all sorts of faults, gaps, and knots in the flow of life - and it prefers them. It has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns. It has much to do with feelings of uniqueness, of grandeur and with the restlessness of the heart, its impatience, its dissatisfaction, its yearning. It needs its share of beauty. It wants to be seen, witnessed, accorded recognition, particularly by the person who is its caretaker. Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors

Each of your brains creates its own myth about the universe.

Enchantments and Dreams: I suspect they are made of the same stuff. They each beguile the mind and confuse the senses with wonder and strangeness so all that was familiar becomes freakish, and the most bizarre of things intimate and natural.

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.

enough people disagree with what Jesus is to prevent Him from...from manifesting, as such. And billions don't believe He existed at all. He is a legend, a myth. A Jewish carpenter people ignore while committing acts in His name, even as they call themselves believers.

Every culture that has lost myth has lost, by the same token, its natural healthy creativity. Only a horizon ringed about with myths can unify a culture. The forces of imagination and the Apollonian dream are saved only by myth from indiscriminate rambling. The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, ubiquitous but unnoticed, presiding over the growth of the child's mind and interpreting to the mature man his life and struggles.

Everybody can imagine how frightened the farmer became as he watched Thor’s eyebrows sink down low over his eyes. The small part of Thor’s eyes that was visible was a sight that alone could have killed. Thor’s hands clenched the shaft of the hammer until his knuckles whitened. As might be expected, the farmer and all his household began to wail. Begging for mercy, they offered in return everything they owned. When Thor saw their fear, his anger passed. Calming down, he took from them their children, Thjalfi and Roskva, as compensation. They became Thor’s bond servants and follow him ever since.

Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe you dont want it to be.

Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it.

...Everything which you know is probably few "%" bullshit... the other part... non-sense... and after all a real fucking myth.

Every myth has a modicum of truth

Fantasy, myth, legend, truth - all are intertwined in the story that is Scotland.

Far from being opposed to the truth, fiction is only its by-product.

Fairy tales, fantasy, legend and myth...these stories, and their topics, and the symbolism and interpretation of those topics...these things have always held an inexplicable fascination for me," she writes. "That fascination is at least in part an integral part of my character — I was always the kind of child who was convinced that elves lived in the parks, that trees were animate, and that holes in floorboards housed fairies rather than rodents. You need to know that my parents, unlike those typically found in fairy tales — the wicked stepmothers, the fathers who sold off their own flesh and blood if the need arose — had only the best intentions for their only child. They wanted me to be well educated, well cared for, safe — so rather than entrusting me to the public school system, which has engendered so many ugly urban legends, they sent me to a private school, where, automatically, I was outcast for being a latecomer, for being poor, for being unusual. However, as every cloud does have a silver lining — and every miserable private institution an excellent library — there was some solace to be found, between the carved oak cases, surrounded by the well–lined shelves, among the pages of the heavy antique tomes, within the realms of fantasy. Libraries and bookshops, and indulgent parents, and myriad books housed in a plethora of nooks to hide in when I should have been attending math classes...or cleaning my room...or doing homework...provided me with an alternative to a reality I didn't much like. Ten years ago, you could have seen a number of things in the literary field that just don't seem to exist anymore: valuable antique volumes routinely available on library shelves; privately run bookshops, rather than faceless chains; and one particular little girl who haunted both the latter two institutions. In either, you could have seen some variation upon a scene played out so often that it almost became an archetype: A little girl, contorted, with her legs twisted beneath her, shoulders hunched to bring her long nose closer to the pages that she peruses. Her eyes are glued to the pages, rapt with interest. Within them, she finds the kingdoms of Myth. Their borders stand unguarded, and any who would venture past them are free to stay and occupy themselves as they would.

Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.

For man without myth is Othello with Desdemona gone: chaos descends, faith vanishes and superstitions prowl in the mind.

f you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine.

From a medical standpoint, the third and the most probable explanation is that Jesus was indeed dead, and what his disciples experienced were mere hallucinations evoked by the grief over the loss of their beloved teacher. It is clinically known as “Post-Bereavement Hallucinations Experiences” or PBHE.

For religious man of the archaic cultures, every every existence begins in time; before a thing exists, its particular time could not exist. Before the cosmos came into existence, there was no cosmic time. Before a particular vegetable species was created, the time that now causes it to grow, bear fruit, and die did not exist. It is for this reason that every creation is imagined as having taken place at the beginning of time, in principio, Time gushes forth with the first appearance of a new category of existents, This is why myth plays such an important role; as we shall show later, the way in which a reality came into existence is revealed by its myth.

For the point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be.

Gaia visited her daughter Mnemosyne, who was busy being unpronounceable.

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a “mythic condition” that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again.

Heaven and hell may be a figment of imagination and a myth for a non-believer but they are quite effective in keeping people on the right track. Most people know how to avoid punishment in this world by circumventing the law and manipulating the system. However, they still fear God because they can’t manipulate Him. They wish to ensure their place in Heaven and avoid hell.

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name.

Here is one reason I think we always need new tarot decks being created. I think of tarot decks as similar to myths and so I think this quote applies: "Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them." Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

He is a unicorn. I want to gently capture him and bring him back to my lab for research.

How should we be able to forget those myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

He's Darkness. Unpleasant. I wouldn't trust him. Nor do I trust every mortal I meet. I don't know where evil comes from, and frankly it doesn't matter. Not right now. Histories and myths are renamed and reinvented eternally across the world. I can't speak to that. What I do know? This is your story.

He was heartbroken, I say. Heartbroken, he repeats. Of course. That's the great myth Edward Monkford's spun around himself, isn't it? The tormented genius who lost the love of his life and became an arch-minimalist as a result. You don't think that's right? I know it isn't.

He would gaze at her with intrigued longan seed eyes.

Hi, Letters and myths in poetry and stories renew and help us move forward; some think, there is only one book that is worthwhile; however, when someone really knows someone, they may realize they are studying their myths and book, even if sci-fi or other. A society or community is really free when you really have a home and can think freely, write freely, and study many aspects without self-censorship.

History is not an objective empirical datum, it is a myth.

Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and ourselves as one of the ways to understand the world around us. Every culture has its creation myth for how the universe came to be, but the stories do not stop at the big picture view; other stories discuss every aspect of the world around us. We humans are chatterboxes and we just can't resist telling a story about just about everything. However compelling and entertaining these stories may be, they fall short of being explanations because in the end all they are is stories. For every story you can tell a different variation, or a different ending, without giving reason to choose between them. If you are skeptical or try to test the veracity of these stories you'll typically find most such stories wanting. One approach to this is forbid skeptical inquiry, branding it as heresy. This meme is so compelling that it was independently developed by cultures around the globes; it is the origin of religion—a set of stories about the world that must be accepted on faith, and never questioned.

I ate mythology & dreamt' - Yusef Komunyakaa (Blackberries)

I am Profusion; I am Posey: the Poet 'I' .. " --Boy Charioteer/Goethe's Faust Pt II

I earn the magic of words by writing. I learn the myth of worlds by imagining.

I brought seaweed snacks from home,' chimed in another kid. "Seaweed got iron, right?" 'I don't think the teachers meant that kind of iron,' said Hui Ann.

I can speak four dialects, but none of them is fairy language.

If we meet a myth with our lives and deepest concerns, the mythic oracles speak directly to us. Myths are oracular in the sense that each person can receive a message or an insight that relates to their life circumstances. The point has never been to “believe” in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.

If I say I do not believe in faeries or elves or trolls, does this imply that I have a set of beliefs and a lifestyle that adheres to this lack of belief? NO, IT ONLY IMPLIES that I do not believe in faeries, elves and trolls. So one cannot extrapolate morality, philosophy, cosmology, character, political party, or any other thing of that sort from the mere lack of belief in one other thing.

If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged role.