Myth Quotes - Page 15

• We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Philosophy, Fall, Men

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• In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

  E. M. Forster

  Beautiful, Men, August

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• Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Poetry, Biographies

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.213, New World Library

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• Well, it's like that myth about the hero. He made wings out of wax so he could fly, but when he got too close to the Sun, to God, the wax melted and he crashed to the ground.

  Hiromu Arakawa

  Hero, Wings, Sun

  "Fullmetal Alchemist". Manga by Hiromu Arakawa, 2001 - 2010.

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• The value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

  C. S. Lewis

  Veils, Rich, Significance

  "On Stories and Other Essays on Literature". Book by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper, "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings", p. 90, 1982.

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• This is our dilemma--either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste--or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. [. . .] Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.

  C. S. Lewis

  Taste, Kind, Tragic

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• There is something feeble, and a little contemptible, about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought, and he therefore cannot carry his own reflection to any logical conclusion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Men, Comforting

  "Human Society in Ethics and Politics".

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• At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Class, Giving, Age

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• The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Integrity, Fall

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• A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman.

  Tom Wolfe

  Time, Aeneas, Age

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.46, Macmillan

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• This is the mythosphere. It's made up of all the stories, theories and beliefs, legends, myths and hopes, that are generated here on Earth. As you can see, it's constantly growing and moving as people invent new tales to tell or find new things to believe. The older strands move out to become these spirals, where things tend to become quite crude and dangerous. They've hardened off, you see.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Believe, Moving, People

  Diana Wynne Jones (2007). “The Game”, Puffin Books

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• Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Men, Differences

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis”, p.28, HarperCollins UK

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• Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Evil, Luck

  "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)

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• I could scream down 90 mountains to less than dust if only one living human had eyes in the head and heart in the body, but there is no chance, my god, no chance. rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog, play the piano drunk listen to the drunk piano, realize the myth of mercy stand still as even a child's voice snarls and we have not been fooled, it was only that we wanted to believe.

  Charles Bukowski

  Dog, Children, Believe

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• Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

  Paulo Freire

  Order, Shadow, Revolution

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

  Robert Jordan

  Memories, Long, Leaving

  Robert Jordan (2010). “The Shadow Rising: Book Four of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.15, Macmillan

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• Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing.

  John Cheever

  Beautiful, Country, Believe

  John Cheever, Blake Bailey (2009). “John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings”

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• What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked. When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by." What will I find on the other side?" The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies.

  Michael Ende

  Distance, Home, Heart

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• I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.

  Charles Bukowski

  Art, Drinking, Writing

  "Factotum". Book by Charles Bukowski, Ch. 29, 1975.

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• The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

  Frank Herbert

  Strong, Moving, Greatness

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.116, Penguin

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• Myth is what we call other people's religion.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, People

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• When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.

  Zadie Smith

  Lying, Believe, Writing

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• The great wheel of fire of ancient wisdom, silence and word engendering the myth of the origin, human action engendering the epic voyage toward the other; historical violence revealing the tragic flaw of the hero who must then return to the land of origin; myth of death and renewal and silence from which new words and images will arise, keeps on turning in spite of the blindness of purely lineal thought.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Hero, Epic, Fire

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• ... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us extraordinary

  Dorothy Allison

  Lying, Self, Hatred

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.25, Open Road Media

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• Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology.

  Michael Shermer

  Religious, Knowing, Tolerance

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