Tales Quotes - Page 38

• For my teachers, unfortunately, certain things were, as they are for you, only tales of power

  Carlos Castaneda

  Teacher, Certain

  Carlos Castaneda (2013). “Tales of Power”, p.57, Simon and Schuster

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• You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You're in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother's womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales of power.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Mother, Running, Listening

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• Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.

  Iris Murdoch

  Pain, Sleep, Laughing

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.80, Penguin

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• Boys like romantic [fairy] tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic...This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost prenatal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Baby, Wine

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• There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

  Greg Bear

  Fun, Wish, Atoms

  Greg Bear (2014). “Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies”, p.26, Open Road Media

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• There's a tale in the Caballa that suggests that the Angel of Death is so beautiful that upon seeing it (or him, or her) you fall in love so hard, so fast, that your soul is pulled out through your eyes. I like that story.

  Neil Gaiman

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Eye

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• A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Giving, Storytelling, Superstitious

  1946 The Living Novel,'An Irish Ghost'.

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• Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.

  George Santayana

  Children, And Love, Natural

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Beautiful, Taken, Creativity

  Letter to his wife (October 21, 1907). "Letters on Cézanne". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1952.

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• There never was a scandalous tale without some foundation.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Foundation, Scandal, Scandalous

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan, J. W. Lake (1838). “The school for scandal: a comedy in five acts”, p.65

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• I've decided to skip 'holistic'. I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward 'Gestalt' and the 'Twist', and lived to tell the tale.

  Calvin Trillin

  Mean, Twists, Gestalt

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• People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Simple, Civilization, Fairy Stories

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• The temptation to vivify the tale and make it walk abroad on its own legs is hard to deny.

  Gelett Burgess

  Temptation, Legs, Deny

  Gelett Burgess (1916). “The Romance of the Commonplace”

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• The Lewis and Clark tale has all the all the elements that one would want to put into a movie. It has the, continual threat for life; it's got the thread of Indians; it's got disease. It has daily risk where these men may go under the water. It's got the fight with the elements. It's got the el the role of the unknown continually threatening them.

  William Least Heat-Moon

  Fighting, Men, Water

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• The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

  Northrop Frye

  Character, Tennessee, Kind

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.449, University of Toronto Press

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• Perhaps no American family-with the possible exception of the Adams family-has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times. But the Kennedy tale-the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy-exerts a fascination upon us that goes beyond their public achievements.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Family, Powerful, Impact

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• The eyes are the pioneers that first announce the soft tale of love.

  Propertius

  Eye, Pioneers, Firsts

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• The pro athlete is a sad tale. He signs a big contract and thinks he's set for life. I didn't think I was set for life, and I don't now. As athletes, we are important, celebrities, in demand and rich. Then we are out of the game and we are not important, not celebrities, not in demand and not rich.

  Fran Tarkenton

  Athlete, Thinking, Games

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• There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.

  Diane Arbus

  Quality, Answers, Demand

  "The Subject of an Arbus" by Jessie Wender, www.newyorker.com. April 8, 2014.

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• I became a writer, a teller of tales, because otherwise I would have died... or worse.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Writing, Died

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• What so tedious as a twice-told tale?

  Homer

  Repetition, Tedious

  Homer (1873). “The Odyssey of Homer”, p.207

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• He who would tell divers tales must know how to vary the tune.

  Marie de France

  Tunes, Know How, Knows

  Marie de France (2015). “Medieval Lays and Legends of Marie de France”, p.97, Xist Publishing

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• The world of religion isn't a logical world; that's why children like it. It's a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children's stories or fairy tales.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Children, Stories, World

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• For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate, it becomes a deep, quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image; but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoils of our soul - its depth, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Struggle, Soul, Depth

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• The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures.

  Gloria Vanderbilt

  Animal, Stories, Fables

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