Myth Quotes

Myths of the heroes speak most eloquently of man's quest to choose life over death.

~ Dorothy Norman

Surely, the gods' judgment is certain. But as for us, we must be satisfied to 'come close' to those things, for we are men, who speak according to what is likely, and whose lectures resemble fables.

~ Proclus

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back.

~ David Almond

What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)

~ Edith Hamilton

There is at least one truth to every myth.

~ Suzy Kassem

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

~ Thomm Quackenbush

In a segment of the Sermon on the Mount, appearing in Matthew 5, Jesus is reported to have set six new teachings of his against six old Jewish teachings. The latter are introduced by such words as 'You have heard that it was said by them of old time' and the former by 'But I say unto you.'Since both the teachings of old time and Jesus' new teachings are predicated on the same profoundly mistaken views of human nature and of the world in general, it is unimportant for us here today to compare and contrast these teachings or to determine which is better or worse in some way or other. The point is that whether better or worse, in this way or that, both are lodged in an egregiously mistaken mythology -- but in a mythology of enormous importance for us, because it is one of the wellsprings of Western culture.

~ Delos Mckown

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.

~ Joseph Campbell

the dank night is sweeping down from the skyand the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.

~ Virgil

The signs of the old flame, I know them well.I pray that the earth gape deep enough to take me downor the almighty Father blast me with one bolt to the shades,the pale, glimmering shades in hell, the pit of night,before I dishonor you, my conscience, break your laws.

~ Virgil

..and why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the seaand what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl...

~ Virgil

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

~ James Hillman

This is the power of myth: that we can experience invisible spiritual realities and truths greater than visible, material things in story form.

~ John Granger

Your endurance is strongly influenced byyour fundamental myth about the fighting.

~ Toba Beta

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

~ Michael Meade

Before being born, his mother explained, babies go to school. Not a school like Boris’s, but a different kind of school, where all the teachers are angels. The angels teach each baby the entire Torah, along with all of the secrets of the universe. Then, just before each baby is born, an angel puts its finger right below the baby’s nose—here she paused to put her finger across his lips (could he see the blood under her skin, or did he only imagine it?)—and whispers to the child: Shh—don’t tell. And then the baby forgets. “Why does he have to forget?” Boris had asked, moving his lips beneath her finger. He didn’t want to know, not really. But his mother’s back had stiffened, and he could feel that she might get up at any moment, put out the light, walk away, disappear. She pulled her hand away from his face, resting it on her own stomach. “So that for the rest of his life,” she said, “he will always have to pay attention to the world, and to everything that happens in it, to try to remember all the things he’s forgotten.

~ Dara Horn

What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness ofnormality that is just a myth.

~ Anne Rice

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.

~ Randy S. Woodley

Myth: Bail-in plans would recapitalize big banks. Fact: big banks are far too insolvent to remotely be in a position for such restoration.

~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Myth: USDollar is money. Fact: Gold & Silver are money. USDollar is legal tender/debt brought down to low parcels for spending purposes.

~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.

~ Diana Gabaldon

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.

~ V. S. Pritchett

One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth.

~ Smokey Robinson

I heard that Jesus had a pet dinosaur. Evolution must be a myth then.

~ John Bacon

There is a myth that those who do humanitarian work have a saviour mentality, but the relationship is reciprocal.

~ Meghan Markle