Mythology Quotes

“Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist's need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.”
― Donald W. Black, DSM-5 Guidebook: The Essential Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

“Perhaps he makes a choice. He chooses the memory of her. That’s why he turns. He doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.”
― Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life. I think ritual is terribly important.”
― Joseph Campbell

“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.”
― Ben Okri

“Yes, I’m Daniel Tahi." I know what your lips taste like.I know you roll your eyes when you think someone is an idiot. I know that you wish you were six inches shorter because you hate being taller than most of the boys you've ever met. Your name is tattooed across my chest and written on my heart.You are a fire daughter of earth, fanua afi and I am vasa loloa,son of the ocean. I am yours...And you can’t even remember who I am.”
― Lani Wendt Young, When Water Burns

“Our destiny is aligned with our heart's innermost longing, a longing embedded within our soul before birth. This longing is a unique pattern or configuration reminiscent of the constellations in the night sky. When we express (press out) our unique configuration, it shines through us with an otherworldly luminosity, manifesting abundance in our lives and the lives of others. Our sole task is to yoke our inner destiny, thread it through our lives and weave it into the world. All else is just shadows and dust.”
― Thea Euryphaessa, Running Into Myself

“THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory. And as
he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.
High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign
of his uniqueness: a tower held upright
by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.

The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when
opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,
whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly:
he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.
His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure,
reflecting vistas and events long vanished,
and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Take the first A out of Abraham and put it at the end. You get Brahama. There’s the ancient connection right there.”
― Ashwin Sanghi

“Even Cronus, the Titan who literally had his kids for breakfast, would find these facts hard to swallow.”
― Tai Odunsi, Cupid's Academy: Argus' Big Fat Greek Wedding Ring

“Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods—they worship us and keep bothering us to do something for them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“And when suddenly
the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,
uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –
she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.”
― Phil Cousineau

“His fingers painted my skin with ruby red patterns of desire. In Keahi’s kiss I could taste the red burn of chili encrusted in the rich sweetness of melted chocolate. I breathed in his scent and it spoke to me of vanilla. The ink of my malu tattoo began to burn, searing markings of fiery joy.”
― Lani Wendt Young, When Water Burns

“Paris and Helen


He called her: golden dawn
She called him: the wind whistles

He called her: heart of the sky
She called him: message bringer

He called her: mother of pearl
barley woman, rice provider,
millet basket, corn maid,
flax princess, all-maker, weef

She called him: fawn, roebuck,
stag, courage, thunderman,
all-in-green, mountain strider
keeper of forests, my-love-rides

He called her: the tree is
She called him: bird dancing

He called her: who stands,
has stood, will always stand
She called him: arriver

He called her: the heart and the womb
are similar
She called him: arrow in my heart.”
― Judy Grahn, The work of a common woman: The collected poetry of Judy Grahn, 1964-1977 ; with an introduction by Adrienne Rich

“You will be the one chosen to reach out to embrace man once again as the heart. So that all will be as it should. ‘Fatu-ma-le-ele-ele’ You will give your fire so that Man may live. And he will give his heart so that earth may live.
Thus it has been spoken.”
― Lani Wendt Young, When Water Burns

“You can't doubt so much, Psyche”
― Francesca Lia Block

“Believe reality is what you were taught was myth.”
― Nicholas A. McGirr, The Growing Dim Project

“There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: ‘Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

“Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.”
― Priya Ardis

“Heresy is the life of a mythology and orthodoxy is the death.”
― Joseph Campbell, Mythology and the Individual

“Lesson Number One in controlling a man: find his weakness. Every man had one.”
― Rachel Firasek, The Last Rising

“In myth, violent death is always justified.”
― René Girard

“I should acquaint the reader with the basic principles of the mythology I adhered to then. I believed . . . that inanimate objects were no less fallible than people. They, too, could be forgetful. And, if you had enough patience, you could catch them by surprise.”
― Stanisław Lem, Highcastle: A Remembrance

“Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Complete Works PergamonMedia

“I’m… “ I stop, at a loss.
Griffin lifts his eyebrows. “Inarticulate at the moment?”
Scowling, I thwack him in the chest.
“Overwrought?” he supplies, his mouth quirking up.
I thwack him again.
“Highly emotional?”
Thwack. Thwack.
“Apparently weak, because none of that hurt at all.”
― Amanda Bouchet, Heart on Fire

“He landed, and the weapons were already lifted, held with a deadly poise that was like no girl, nor no man either. The greatest warrior of his generation.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“The mythology of freedom under capitalism for the average person is a con job.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“There is a small wooden viewing tower, and pamphlets from the State of Ohio, but they focus on facts—for instance, the Serpent Mound is as long as four football fields—not on meaning. In The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen, a Native poet, mythologist, and scholar, explains that Serpent Woman was one of the names of the quintessential original spirit “that pervades everything, that is capable of powerful song and radiant movement, and that moves in and out of the mind…she is both Mother and Father to all people and all creatures. She is the only creator of thought, and thought precedes creation.”

In Western mythology, she might be compared to Medusa, the serpent-haired Greek goddess whose name means Knowing Woman or Protectress. She once was all-powerful—until patriarchy came along in the form of a mythic young man who chopped off her head. He was told to do this by Athena, who sprang full-blown from the mind of her father, Zeus—a goddess thought up by patriarchy and therefore motherless. There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road