Mythology Quotes

“Rest in Peace?’ Why that phrase? That’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard! You die, and they say ‘Rest in Peace!’ …Why would one need to ‘rest’ when they’re dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d’Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I’m only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won’t need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack, 'cause you're a major mythological figure...but now you've just gone nuts!”
― Mike Mignola, Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil

“Maybe that's why you demonised them,
turned them into monsters,

because you think monsters are easier
to understand than women who say no to you.”
― Nikita Gill, Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters

“Izzi: Remember Moses Morales?
Tom Verde: Who?
Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about.
Tom Verde: From your trip.
Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it.
Tom Verde: Izzi...
Izzi: [embraces Tom] No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head!
Tom Verde: Why are you telling me this?
Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.”
― Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain

“-’Tell me’, he said, ‘who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one’?

-’A happy one, of course.’

-’Wrong. A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy yo a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred’.

-’But surely, I said, you have to reward him eventually. Otherwise he will stop offering’.

-’Oh, you would be surprised how long he will go on. But yes, in the end, it’s best to give him something. Then he will be happy again. And you can start over.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.”
― William Harwood, Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology

“You'll get fired if anyone finds out about us!"
"So many rules in this century," Vane muttered.”
― Priya Ardis, My Merlin Awakening

“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”
― Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

“Plus, I happened to be a history nerd. Why else would I be interested in a guy born in the year 519?”
― Priya Ardis, My Merlin Awakening

“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

“He’s so powerful. Who knows maybe he’s advanced past eating”
― Priya Ardis, My Boyfriend Merlin

“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”
― Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero

“What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

“What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.”
― Joseph Campbell

“He raised a brow at another abrupt change in the conversation. “Are you disappointed I couldn’t dodge a couple bullets?”

A real smile teased her lips as she lowered her coffee mug. “On the contrary, I’m a sucker for a guy with scars, so for your protection, we should probably stick to the case.”
― Lisa Kessler, Lure of Obsession

“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!”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“I sort of fell."

"Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.”
― Priya Ardis

“The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.”
― Priya Ardis, My Merlin Awakening

“the dank night is sweeping down from the sky
and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.”
― Virgil

“The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.”
― Priya Ardis, My Merlin Awakening

“My name is Arianna Morganna Brittany DuLac--you can imagine why I went by the name Ryan.”
― Priya Ardis, My Boyfriend Merlin

“I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth.

There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.”
― Jeffrey Tayler

“An entire mythology is stored within our language.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“In every one of the Greeks' mythology tales, there is this: a man chasing a woman, or a woman chasing a man. There is never a meeting in the middle.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

“Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it’s roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion’s heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale.”
― Priya Ardis, My Boyfriend Merlin

“Beautiful people never lie.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero

“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.”
― Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin Martyr, Addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius; Prefaced by Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin

“If you have to go, you know I will go with you." We slept.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles