Quotes About Myth

History is lies agreed upon

Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted.

I don't believe in writers' block. Do doctors have 'doctors block?' Do plumbers have 'plumbers' block?" No. We all have days when we don't feel like working, but why do writers turn that into something so damn special by giving it a faintly romantic name.

The forest, far from the mundane and familiar world of the city, provides the appropriate setting for exceptional figures, both holy and mythic. Here, as in the world landscapes, figures and settings are truly matched; and as Reindert Falkenburg and myself have argued, the remoteness and grand scale of the forest or the earlier mountain wilderness signal the sanctity of or gravity of the human scene, however small in scale, which the discerning viewer must seek out and read as significant.

We are here making myths that are, at the same time, absolutely true.

I don't feel like a mother. [...] I thought I would be smashed flat, or heaved high, mythically altered for this, the most mythic of roles but, shock of all shock, here I am, still me. And the baby? I have come to like her a little bit. That's it. A little bit.

In 1513, only six years before Magellan undertook his circumnavigation, Juan Ponce de León set out to find the Fountain of Youth.

According to tradition, the fountain was located on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas.

the account was embellished with various wonders of

It is to be supposed that the other giants killed him because he had come to us.

For example, a myth faithfully told (and not watered down for children or to be socially acceptable) carries more powerful spiritual energy than a scholarly discourse about the myth.

Dare to live the truth of your myth.

Many great truths are told through stories and tales. 'Story' is a part of whom we are as human beings. For untold centuries, occult truths were passed on orally from teacher to student, as stories. Whether these stories were true or not, did not matter. It still does not matter, as long as the message is conveyed.

You know, it's sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don't make money.

Gods are fragile things they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

When a woman raised in patriarchal culture … immerses herself in sacred space where various manifestations of the Goddess bring forth the Earthbody from the spinning void … She will body the myth with her own totemic being. She is the cosmic form of waxing, fullness, waning: virgin, mature creator, wise crone. She cannot be negated ever again. Her roots are too deep – and they are everywhere.

Superstition is the reservoir of all truths.

Don't wait for the good woman. She doesn't exist.

A virgin woman has saved France as a virgin man has saved all mankind. (Une pucelle a sauvé la France, - Comme Un puceau a sauvé tous les hommes.)

We call them faerie. We don't believe in them. Our loss.

It is a myth to think that responding in anger is going to cause another person to respect you. The other person may come to fear you but not respect you.

If the basic fallacies, or the absence of base, in every specialization of thought can be seen by the units of its opposition, why then we see that all supposed foundations in our whole existence are myths, and that all discussion and supposed progress are the conflicts of phantoms and the overthrow of old delusions by new delusions. Nevertheless

Whether Jesus rose or not isn't affected by the brutality, chauvinism, or downright tediousness of his followers through the ages. It's a matter of mere history: the fact or fallacy of the resurrection is in the same class of alleged facts as the contention that the battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415, or that I caught the 0856 train this morning. And so it is subject to the same sort of historical inquiry.

Was there not some Greek myth about the man who tried to ravish the goddess, only to have her turn to stone when he touched her? That is literally what has happened to Paris. When the Germans came, the soul simply went out of it; and what is left is only stone.