Quotes About Myth

The reign of imagology begins where history ends

If I imagine the genesis of a novelist in the form of an exemplary tale, a myth, that genesis looks to me like a conversion story: Saul becoming Paul; the novelist being born from the ruins of his lyrical world.

Let us suppose that such is the case, that somewhere in the world each of us has a partner who once formed part of our body. Tomas's other part is the young woman he dreamed about. The trouble is, man does not find the other part of himself. Instead, he is sent a Tereza in a bulrush basket. But what happens if he nevertheless later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer? The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato's myth?

El amor tiende a hacer una leyenda de sí mismo y a mitificar retrospectivamente sus comienzos.

How many ancient myths begin with the rescue of an abandoned child! If Polybus hadn't taken in the young Oedipus, Sophocles wouldn't have written his most beautiful tragedy!

Mluvívá se o láskách na první pohled; jsem si pÃ…â"¢íliÅ¡ dobÃ…â"¢e vÄ›dom toho, že láska má sklon vytváÃ…â"¢et sama ze sebe legendu a zpÄ›tnÄ› mytizovat své po?átky

El mito del eterno retorno viene a decir, per negationem, que una vida que desaparece de una vez para siempre, que no retorna, es como una sombra, carece de peso, está muerta de antemano y, si ha sido horrorosa, bella, elevada, ese horror, esa elevación o esa belleza nada significan.

The reality is that you are the spirit. The rest is a myth.

In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse.

I think love without heartbreak is a myth. A pretty myth, but the kind of myth that ultimately makes us feel worse about ourselves because we're somehow not able to make it come true.

Mr. Right' is usually two or eight men.

The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him

We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle

Human kingdoms advance by force and violence with falling bombs and flying bullets, but God's kingdom advances by stories, fictions, tales that are easily ignored and easily misunderstood. Perhaps that's the only way it can be.1

Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters.

But lies have a life of their own and are harder to kill than either men or unicorns.

As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance.

It was the first time I'd realised that the giant in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' was an Afrikaner.

If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?

I'm told that Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson" (at least in the Arthur Conan Doyle books) Jimmy Cagney never said, "You dirty rat"; and Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam." But they might as well have, because these apocrypha have firmly insinuated themselves into popular culture.

Every culture has a myth of the world before creation, and of the creation of the world [.] These myths are tributes to human audacity. The chief difference between them and our modern scientific myth of the Big Bang is that science is self-questioning, and that we can perform experiments and observations to test our ideas. But those other creation stories are worthy of our deep respect.

The theologian Meric Casaubon argued—in his 1668 book, Of Credulity and Incredulity—that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them. Anything that a large number of people believe must be true.

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

In our time we have less severe standards. We tell children about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for reasons we think emotionally sound, but then disabuse them of these myths before they're grown. Why retract? Because their well-being as adults depends on them knowing the world as it really is. We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Claus.