Icarus Quotes

• Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Fall, Light

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• Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

  E. O. Wilson

  Ambition, Knowledge, Science

  "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge". Book by E. O. Wilson (Chapter One: The Ionian Enchantment), www.nytimes.com. 1998.

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• Icarus flew too close to the sun, but at least he flew.

  Jeremy Robert Johnson

  Sun, Flew

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• Backward we traveled to reclaim the day Before we fell, like Icarus, undone; All we find are altars in decay And profane words scrawled black across the sun.

  Sylvia Plath

  Black, Decay, Sun

  Sylvia Plath (2011). “Letters Home”, p.206, Faber & Faber

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• But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

  Randall Munroe

  Stories, Lessons, Adhesive

  Randall Munroe (2014). “What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions”, p.194, Hachette UK

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• I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

  Jack Gilbert

  Believe, Triumph, Failing

  Jack Gilbert (2009). “Refusing Heaven”, p.18, Knopf

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• It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

  Karen Russell

  Lonely, Alive, Fierce

  Karen Russell (2012). “Swamplandia!”, p.130, Random House

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• Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall.

  Dwight Longenecker

  Hero, Wings, Ideas

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• Everyone forgets Icarus also flew.

  Jack Gilbert

  Forget, Flew

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• It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Graduation, Moving, Fall

  Oprah Winfrey’s Commencement address at Harvard University, Сambridge, Massachusetts, news.harvard.edu. May 30, 2013.

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• I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Jobs, Wings, Trying

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure

  Alison Bechdel

  Grief, Sea, Design

  Alison Bechdel (2007). “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.

  Seth

  Deception, Speak, Willingness

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• I’ll just say one word: Icarus. If you get it, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. But you should probably read more.

  Tony Wilson

  Should, Fine, One Word

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• Man has been thrown into the world. It had always made him think of Icarus and those other great tumblers, Ixion, Phaeton, Tantalus - all these jumpers without parachutes from a world of gods and heroes.

  Cees Nooteboom

  Hero, Men, Thinking

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• Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Stars, Eye, Heart

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• The most beautiful dream that has haunted the heart of man since Icarus is today reality.

  Louis Bleriot

  Beautiful, Dream, Heart

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• think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
  larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
  of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!

  Anne Sexton

  Ocean, Thinking, Wings

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Jesus, Hero, Son

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• There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Success, Graduation, Business

  Commencement address in Harvard, news.harvard.edu. May 30, 2013.

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• In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

  W. H. Auden

  Fall, Boys, Sky

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.122, DEBOLS!LLO

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• Nothing is more symptomatic of the enervation, of the decompression of the Western imagination, than our incapacity to respond to the landings on the Moon. Not a single great poem, picture, metaphor has come of this breathtaking act, of Prometheus' rescue of Icarus or of Phaeton in flight towards the stars.

  George Steiner

  Stars, Moon, Imagination

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• Greek myths are heroic, noble and tragic; but the American Dream is heroic, comical, and uplifting. Americans are a people in whom overweening ambition is rewarded, not punished. The Wright Brothers did not have their wings melt when they flew too high. Perhaps their wings were more soundly built than those of Icarus.

  John C. Wright

  Uplifting, Dream, Brother

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• Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it

  Seth Godin

  Art, Practice, Creating

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• If your team is filled with people who work for the company, you'll soon be defeated by tribes of people who work for a cause.

  Seth

  Life, Work, Team

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