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eab7498 Don't feel bad, I'm usually about to die. greek humor mythology percy-jackson sorry Rick Riordan
a0d8323 "Can you surf really well, then?" I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh. athena funny humor myth mythology olympians percy-jackson posiedon the-lightning-thief zeus Rick Riordan
e3f0a10 I said hello to the poodle. mythology pets Rick Riordan
fa975c6 And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time. mythology percy-jackson Rick Riordan
a419c19 "They're Lares. House gods." "House gods," Percy said. "Like...smaller than real gods, but larger than apartment gods?" house-gods lares mythology real-gods rome son-of-neptune Rick Riordan
18c37a4 I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call. gods mythology suicide Roger Zelazny
9e06426 Love cannot live where there is no trust. love mythology relationships trust Edith Hamilton
22581e5 One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this. contemporary fiction mythology Neil Gaiman
f479709 There's a Greek legend--no, it's in something Plato wrote--about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That's why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male. lesbian lgbt mythology Nancy Garden
fa2ba8b Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told. mythology inspirational Joseph Campbell
2c4d113 You become mature when you become the authority of your own life. mythology philosophy spirituality Joseph Campbell
d0d5288 A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen. agnosticism bureaucracy funny humor mythology parody prayer religion Roger Zelazny
65d12c9 Swords can't solve every problem. fantasy mythology rick-riordan the-heroes-of-olympus the-mark-of-athena Rick Riordan
90a4871 "There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?" metaphors mythology religion theism Joseph Campbell
81a2528 After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes? homer iliad justification mythology passage-of-time passion past right troy truth war Umberto Eco
5b66a4f Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there. loki mythology norse-mythology the-gospel-of-loki Joanne Harris
7b2c9c4 He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble. Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god. loki mythology norse saftey trouble Neil Gaiman
3c74e98 "Behold, my children!" she said. "The instrument of my revenge. I will call it a scythe!" The Titans muttered among themselves: What is that for? Why is it curved? How do you spell scythe?" mythology percy-jackson Rick Riordan
264a096 The Bird of Hermes is my name, eating my wings to make me tame. blood fear hellsing mythology vampires Kohta Hirano
7d8e0f5 "Leo got up and brushed himself off. "I hate that guy". He offered Jason his arm like they should go skipping together."I`m Dylan. I`m so cool, I want to date myself, but I can`t figure out how! You want to date me instead? You`re so lucky!" "Leo" Jason said "You`re weird" mythology Rick Riordan
a8f685d In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. mythology philosophy spirituality Joseph Campbell
8f4e666 One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment. mythology philosophy spirituality Joseph Campbell
c93615e When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111) mythology spiritual-experience spirituality translation Joseph Campbell
51cc040 Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up! greek humor mythology public-service-announcement safety Rick Riordan
52c12f6 Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it. mythology philosophy spirituality Joseph Campbell
913055a Awe is what moves us forward. mythology philosophy spirituality Joseph Campbell
bff4f41 We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value human-condition myth mythology Karen Armstrong
bf88e3c "There's my baby!" I cried, quite carried away, "There's my poochiekins!" children-s humor mythology serpent-in-the-shadows Riordan Rick
252aefb All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. government ideology magnetism mythology politics power religion science-fiction Frank Herbert
6bb568f I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels--peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. inspiration joy mythology on-fairy-stories J.R.R. Tolkien
81b2b39 Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods - they worship us and keep bothering us to do something. humour mythology Oscar Wilde
109e302 "I asked "What do you even do with a chimera?" "What wouldn't you do with a chimera?" Jeff asked. "They're like the Swiss Army knife of animals." humor mythology Chloe Neill
8c7af81 As often as we made love I remembered what my poet told me, that this man was born of a goddess, the force that moves the stars and the waves of the sea and couples the animals in the fields in spring, the power of passion, the light of the evening star. mythology passion poetry Ursula K. Le Guin
7650892 Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love. But we won't be parted till I know it's right that we part. mythology parting Ursula K. Le Guin
91e1fd2 ...the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants. creation-myths mythology science Richard Dawkins
a2f31be "But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares." "So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans." "What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?" fables mythology religion symbolism unicorns Umberto Eco
6a948ad The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended. intellectual mythology norse A.S. Byatt
4962f2b If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged role. mythology novel Karen Armstrong
30acb86 The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his . North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji--a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story. ancient-egypt ancient-rome atheism babylon baekdu-mountain bashar-al-assad china dynasties egypt francois-duvalier hafez-al-assad haiti jean-claude-duvalier joseph-stalin khabarovsk kim-il-sung kim-jong-il kim-jong-suk miraculous-births mount-fuji mythology north-korea reincarnation religion rome russia syria Christopher Hitchens
65586b9 Some things can be recovered. Some things can be restored. But some lost things, we seek forever. mythology Margaret George
de3f2fb Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology. mythology Bryan Sykes
102b569 "Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..." It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy." mythology poetry prayer venus worship Ursula K. Le Guin
cd40d54 "A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman. The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names--Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live." gods mythology spirituality worship Ursula K. Le Guin
33363c6 My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn't do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck my lightning but didn't matter to most people. mythology retellings Francesca Lia Block
21ea21a "I always thought they were fabulous monsters!" said the Unicorn. "Is it alive?" "It can talk," said Haigha, solemnly. The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said, "Talk, child." Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: "Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!" "Well, now that we have seen each other," said the Unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?" believe lion-and-the-unicorn monster mythology unicorn wonderland Lewis Carroll
04740ab In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this. mythology Chaim Potok
3b617cc Atlas said, 'Must my future be so heavy?' Hera said, 'That is your present, Atlas. Your future hardens every day, but it is not fixed.' 'How can I escape my fate?' 'You must choose your destiny. fate future mythology Jeanette Winterson
08f7659 Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo. greek-mythology mythology poetry Margaret Atwood
7a9c449 ...Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable--the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction. family food mythology religion stories veganism vegetarianism Jonathan Safran Foer
3300616 I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence...You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story's factuality...[rather] to a story's causality - whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions. mythology religion spirituality Orson Scott Card
2f7d43c 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) cleobis hera myth mythology Edith Hamilton
9b32798 Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. ethics existentialism meaning-of-life mythology prophecy religion science-fiction Frank Herbert
99088e4 A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship mythology Scott Westerfeld
d7d1dc7 Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life. freedom ideology liberty mythology post-apocalyptic power religion science-fiction social-science theology tyranny Frank Herbert
3ee7d7c So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing. love mythology Margaret Atwood
bc426f9 People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape, then people will follow. happiness meaning meaning-of-life mythology purpose something-greater unconscious zeitgeist Frank Herbert
40ea440 Why has not England a great mythology? Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness, and the greater melodies about our country-side have all issued through the pipes of Greece. Deep and true as the native imagination can be, it seems to have failed here. It has stopped with the witches and the fairies. It cannot vivify one fraction of a summer field, or give names to half a dozen stars. England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk. fairies mythology myths poetry tolkien witches E. M. Forster
dd0c8fd Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power? mythology story storytelling Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
4d1c33f "That night she wrote a hasty sketch and showed it to Oliver. "It's all right," he said. "But I'd take out that stuff about Olympian mountains and the Stygian caverns of the mine. That's about used up, I should think." exaggeration metaphors mythology writing Wallace Stegner
b1df1fb But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness. end-of-the-world environmental-catastrophe gods loki myth mythology norse-mythology ragnarok self-destruction a.s. byatt
057437f The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories. The black was now in the thin child's head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered. mythology myths norse-mythology A.S. Byatt
956b9a4 At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. mythology prophecy religion science-fiction Frank Herbert
842ef2f God lives and works in history. The outward mythology changes, the inward truth remains the same. mythology Iris Murdoch
20bbc79 Kafamda bu dusunceler gecip duruyordur, kalbim parcalanmisti, perisandi, cevremdeki insanlarla sevinmek istiyor, ama bunu yapamiyordum. Kendimi bir hain gibi hissediyordum, o buyuk hatayi ben yapmisim gibi, buna bizzat kendi, varligim ve kisiligimle ben neden olmusum gibi. Annem insanin kendi kendine acimasina neden olan o sucluluk duygusunu ogretmisti bana, hayatimin buyuk bir bolumunde bu duyguyu hep yasadim. Cocukca ve yanlis oldugunu bildigim icin bu duyguyla savastimsa da, o gerginlik ve baski altinda cocuklasmak, yanlis yapmak, tekrar bu duyguya yenik dusmek cok kolaydi. fiction-novel mythology mythology-fiction women-s-strength Ursula K. Le Guin
eaeb2b4 That night she dreamed about the King again. She stood in a riverside meadow between greenwood and castle. Overhead the sun shone gilt in a sky like powdered lapis and struck golden sparks from the King's blood-red dragon banner. fantasy king-arthur legend mythology pendragon-s-heir Suzannah Rowntree
7952a56 She became his Ariadne, leading him through the labyrinth of books, stopping now and then to pass another one to him. mythology Donna Leon
f5c9072 "I do tasks for the gods, usually things like tracking down rare items or taking someone safely to a destination." D'Molay the Freeman Tracker" mystery-novels mythology M.Scott Verne
2cbaba1 Impari lentamente, mio amato, ma impari. E cio che si impara lentamente scende piu nel profondo. Voi uomini e i vostri Dei! Vi beffate della Madre per la sua lentezza da lumaca, perche crea ciecamente al buio. Tuttavia quando create senza di Lei, in fretta e alla luce, create davvero ciecamente, dando forma, magari, alla morte di un mondo! Ebbene, avvelenate il mare e il cielo, l'aria che respirate, e persino la dolce pelle bruna del suo seno, che Essa vi ha sempre permesso di lacerare per darvi le messi. Uccidete e uccidete finche non rimane piu niente se non ossa nude su una terra squallida e contaminata. La Madre e potente; Essa ha molti corpi, e il vostro mondo e solo uno di quelli. Nella Sua potenza Essa puo tuttavia guarire le vostre ferite e far rifiorire la terra, si: allevare voi uomini, anche se deve partorire di nuovo tutta la vostra razza. Perche una buona madre e paziente; sa che un bambino inciampa piu volte prima d'imparare a camminare... mabinogion mythology walton welsh Evangeline Walton
a58b385 Connecting the great universal myths of cataclysm, is it possible that such coincidences that cannot be coincidences, and accidents that cannot be accidents, could denote the global influence of an ancient, though as yet unidentified, guiding hand? If so, could it be that same hand, during and after the last Ice Age, which drew the series of highly accurate and technically advanced world maps reviewed in Part I? And might not that same hand have left its ghostly fingerprints on another body of universal myths? those concerning the death and resurrection of gods, and great trees around which the earth and heavens turn, and whirlpools, and churns, and drills, and other similar revolving, grinding contrivances? mythology Graham Hancock
9756e16 Mythology was never designed to describe historically verifiable events that actually happened. It was an attempt to express their inner significance or to draw attention to realities that were too elusive to be discussed in a logically coherent way. meaning myth mythology reality Karen Armstrong
189c935 The implications of the true story are existential and corrosive to our larger national myth. To understand that the most costly war in this country's history was launched in direct opposition to everything the country claims to be, to understand that this war was the product of centuries of enslavement, which is to see an even longer, more total war, is to alter the accepted conception of America as a beacon of freedom. How does one face this truth or forge a national identity out of it? freedom mythology race race-relations racism slavery war Ta-Nehisi Coates
8a79063 If the students were taught about shuttle flights, plate tectonics and submarine volcanoes, they were also immersed in the traditional myths of their culture--the ancient story, for example, of how the island of Pohnpei had been built under the direction of a mystical octopus, Lidakika. (I was fascinated by this, for it was the only cephalopod creation myth I had ever heard. creation-myths mythology pohnpei Oliver Sacks
4ff4e37 Elsewhere Lankford reiterates that this belief system was by no means confined to the Plains, the Eastern Woodlands, and the Mississippi Valley. It is better understood, he argues, as part of 'a widespread religious pattern' found right across North America and 'more powerful than the tendency towards cultural diversity.' Indeed, what the evidence suggests is the former existence of 'an ancient North American international religion ... a common ethnoastronomy ... and a common mythology. Such a multicultural reality hints provocatively at more common knowledge which lay behind the facade of cultural diversity united by international trade networks. One likely possibility of a conceptual realm in which that common knowledge became focused is mortuary belief [and] ... the symbolism surrounding death. ethnoastronomy legacy mythology origin pattern symbolism Graham Hancock
75519b2 He felt Herakles' hand move on his thigh and Geryon's head went back like a poppy in a breeze -- herakles intimacy mythology Anne Carson
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