Myth Quotes - Page 18

• If swans weren't real myths'd make up.

  David Mitchell

  Real, Swans, Ifs

  "Black Swan Green".

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beth: "I don't think you realize what you're dealing with here. You can't just mess around with the forces of the universe!" Xavier: "What ever happened to free will? Or was that just a myth?

  Alexandra Adornetto

  Thinking, Realizing, Free Will

  Alexandra Adornetto (2010). “Halo”, p.244, Feiwel & Friends

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know, some people think Shadowhunters are just myths. Like mummies and genies." Kyle grinned at Jace. "Can you grant wishes?" "That depends," he said. "Do you wish to be punched in the face?

  Cassandra Clare

  Thinking, People, Wish

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “City of Fallen Angels”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Years, Two, Half

  "Fictional character: Galadriel". "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", www.imdb.com. 2001.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• i remembered the myth about Andromeda and how she had been chained to a rock by her own parents as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Maybe she'd gotten too many F's on her report card or something.

  Rick Riordan

  Sacrifice, Rocks, Sea

  Rick Riordan (2007). “The Sea of Monsters”, Disney-Hyperion

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.

  Karen Armstrong

  Art, Our World, Self

  16 Copy quote

• As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Pain, War, Differences

  Mohsin Hamid (2007). “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, p.168, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now that Scotty has entered the realm of myth, everyone wants to own him. And maybe they should. Doesn't a myth belong to everyone?

  Jennifer Egan

  Want, Should, Scotty

  Jennifer Egan (2010). “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, p.271, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ixion exists as an antidote to the rules and conventions of other places. We believe that indulging in pleasure will make better people. Self-denial and discipline and virtue are all myths invented to control you.

  Marianne de Pierres

  Believe, Self, Discipline

  14 Copy quote

• We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Past, Sea, Differences

  Robert G. Ingersoll (1997). “Ingersoll's Greatest Lectures”, p.451, Health Research Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day.

  Carl Jung

  Dream, Night, Forgotten

  9 Copy quote

• We are not perfect. What god is Examine yours. According to your mythos he was so disappointed with his initial efforts creating your race that he tried again. At least we imprisoned our mistakes. Your god permits his to roam free. At a mere few thousand years old your creation myths are far more absurd than ours.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Mistake, Race, Years

  Karen Marie Moning (2011). “Shadowfever: Fever Series”, p.40, Delacorte Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Advancement, Structure

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Equality, Behaviour

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Believe, Men

  17 Copy quote

• Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.

  Joseph Campbell

  Narrative, Metaphor, Symbolic

  Joseph Campbell (2002). “The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion”, p.28, New World Library

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate and gratify sexual longing. In suggesting a vision in place of a woman, it has a numbing effect, reducing all senses but the visual, and impairing even that.

  Naomi Wolf

  Hurt, Self Esteem, Teaching

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• All things fade and quickly turn to myth.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Turns, All Things, Fades

  Marcus Aurelius (2006). “Meditations”, p.72, Penguin UK

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Believe, Long Ago, Legends

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.147, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once upon a time . . .” “In the beginning was . . .” That’s the way it always starts off. Every story, gospel, history, chronicle, myth, legend, folktale, or old wives’ tale blues riff begins with “Woke up this mornin’. . . .

  Steven Tyler

  Wife, Once Upon A Time, Stories

  10 Copy quote

• The widely accepted assertion that, only if you let markets be will everyone be paid correctly and thus fairly, according to his worth, is a myth. Only when we part with this myth and grasp the political nature of the market and the collective nature of individual productivity will we be able to build a more just society in which historical legacies and collective actions, and not just individual talents and efforts, are properly taken into account in deciding how to reward people.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Taken, People, Effort

  11 Copy quote

• And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.

  Stacy Schiff

  Facts, Absence

  5 Copy quote

• Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

  Aristotle

  Philosopher, Lovers, Wonder

  11 Copy quote

• Like mold on books, grow myths on history.

  Laini Taylor

  Book, Mold, Grows

  4 Copy quote

• ...Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.

  Henry Jenkins

  Fans, Culture, Fiction

  18 Copy quote