Quotes About Mythology

She told the holy stories and the funny stories, the aadizookaanag that explained how the world came into being, how it continued to be made.

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

Somehow, in our language and in our psyches, we have come to equate good with light and evil with darkness. The symbolism runs deep. We see it in our poetry, our religion, our songs, and our cultural mythology.

Mer-people could be read as a colonialist term," explained the biologist.

Creio haver lido em Tácito que as éguas iberas concebiam pelo vento, se não foi nele, foi noutro autor antigo,que entendeu guardar essa crendice nos seus livros. Neste particular, a minha imaginação era uma grande égua ibera; a menor brisa lhe dava um potro, que saía logo cavalo de Alexandre;(...)

Santa curiosidade! Tu não és só a alma da civilização, és também o pomo da concórdia, fruta divina, de outro sabor que não aquele pomo da mitologia.

I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming - making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate.

Nolan said his mother had got a bit better about things and that she had agreed to go away next summer for a holiday by the sea. Nolan's whole family had been wanting to do this for ages but his mother had always said the seaside was full of rats and beetles and sea snakes. St. Patrick had only got rid of the land snakes according to Nolan's mother, but he had no power over the huge snakes calling themselves eels which came in on beaches all over the country.

the stereotype of the lazy academic is, like that of the welfare queen, a politically useful myth" (par. 24).

Under the volcano! It was not for nothing the ancients had placed Tartarus under Mt. Aetna, nor within it, the monster Typhoeus, with his hundred heads and—relatively—fearful eyes and voices.

I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher

any legend is not worth making up if it does not include a murder or two.

Men can be in love with literary figures, with poetic and mythological figures, but let them meet with Artemis, with Venus, with any of the goddesses of love, and then they start hurling moral judgments.

There are women's voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night – like the stories of the werewolf, for instance – were invented by men who saw women transformed at night – from idealized, worshipful creatures into animals and thought that they were possessed.

Sabina placed The Firebird on the phonograph. The delicate footsteps of the Firebird were heard at first through infinite distance, each step rousing the phosphorescent sparks from the earth, each note a golden bugle to marshal delight. A jungle of dragon tails thrashing in erotic derisions, a brazier of flesh-smoking prayers, the multiple debris of the stained glass fountains of desire.

half man and half marble.

Why is it so impossible to believe: that we are as many headed as monsters, as many armed as gods, as many hearted as angels?

For I, too, am a mythmaker, a weaver of nightmares and dreams

The "American Dream" is grounded in the promise of the transcendence of social class boundaries, as in the opportunity to enable one's children to climb the social ladder through educational and financial achievement. The mythology of upward mobility encourages Americans (including many in the academy) to pathologize poverty and disregard the influence of privilege

The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained—as the beliefs, rituals, and iconography of each of our religions attest to centuries of cross-pollination among them.

Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world.

And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest.

Why didn't Noah save the dinosaurs, if God told him to bring two of every creature?

Most people believe that gods exist. Many do not; this does not trouble the gods, who know that if gods, in turn, were to not believe that people exist, people would actually cease to exist. Mortal belief does make gods stronger; it inflates their egos, which is always good for the metabolism.