Greek Myths Quotes

Mythos is the sum total of the early historic and prehistoric myths which preceded the logos. The mythos includes not only the Greek myths but the Old Testament, the Vedic Hymns and the early legends of all cultures which have contributed to our present world understanding. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents. ~ Rick Riordan

Happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked ~ Margaret Atwood

Poppy used to share the room with her older sister, and piles of he sister's outgrown clothes still remained spread out in drifts, along with a collection of used makeup and notebooks covered in stickers and scrawled with lyrics. A jumbled of her sister's old Barbies were on top of a bookshelf, waiting for Poppy to try and fix their melted arms and chopped hair. The bookshelves were overflowing with fantasy paperbacks and overdue library books, some of them on Greek myths, some on mermaids, and a few on local hauntings. The walls were covered in posters-Doctor Who, a cat in a bowler hat, and a giant map of Narnia. ~ Holly Black

Keep in mind that in the whole long tradition of storytelling, from Greek myths through Shakespeare through King Arthur and Robin Hood, this whole notion that you can't tell stories about certain characters because someone else owns them is a very modern one - and to my mind, a very strange one. ~ Michael Montoure

One of the reasons that most literary artists are contemptuous of Sigmund Freud - whose thought Vladimir Nabokov once characterized as no more than private parts covered up by Greek myths - is that his extreme determinism is felt to be immensely untrue to the rich complexity of life, with its twists and turns and manifold surprises. ~ Joseph Epstein

My aunt and my mother read to me when I was three from all the old Grimm fairy tales, Andersen fairy tales, and then all the Oz books as I was growing up ... So by the time when I was ten or eleven, I was just full to the brim with these, and the Greek myths, and the Roman myths. And then, of course, I went to Sunday school, and then you take in the Christian myths, which are all fascinating in their own way ... I guess I always tended to be a visual person, and myths are very visual, and I began to draw, and then I felt the urge to carry on these myths.
If I'm anything at all, I'm not really a science-fiction writer - I'm a writer of fairy tales and modern myths about technology. ~ Ray Bradbury

Sonechka, meanwhile, placid soul that she was - cocooned by the thousand volumes of her reading, lulled by the hazy murmurings of the Greek myths, the hypnotically shrill recorder fluting of the Middle Ages, the misty windswept yearning of Ibsen, the minutely detailed tedium of Balzac, the astral music of Dante, the siren song of the piercing voices of Rilke and Novalis, seduced by the moralistic despair of the great Russian writers calling out to the heart of heaven itself - this placid soul had no awareness that her great moment was at hand. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

THAT Perseus always won. That's why my momhad named me after him, even if he was son of Zeus ann I was son of Posidon. The original Perseus was one of the only heros in the greek myths who got a happy ending. The others died-betrayed, mauled, mutilated, poisoned, or cursed by the gods. My mom hoped i would inherit Perseus's luck. Judging by how my life was going so far, i wasn't too optimistic. ~ Rick Riordan

I read Greek myths. I read about far off places, Venice and Paris. I read about men who searched for things they could not find at home, and women who fell in love with the wrong person and waited for the arrival of their beloved for so long that a year was no different from a single day. The same thing was happening to me. Years were passing. I was already a woman, and I still wasn't done reading. ~ Alice Hoffman

Eventually, Krysomallos would be skinned for his fleece, which became known as the Golden Fleece, which means I am related to a sheepskin rug.
This is why you don't want to think too hard about who you're related to in the Greek myths. It'll drive you crazy. ~ Rick Riordan

It'll be dangerous," Nyssa warned him. "Hardship, monsters, terrible suffering. Possibly none of you will come back alive."
"Oh." Suddenly Leo didn't look so excited. Then he remembered everyone was watching. "I mean ... Oh, cool! Suffering? I love suffering! Let's do this. ~ Rick Riordan

I'd had years of practise looking dumb when people threw out Greek names I didn't know. It's a skill of mine. Annabeth keeps telling me to read a book of Greek myths, but I don't see the need. It's easier just to have folks explain stuff. ~ Rick Riordan

You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends...I don't like this position. I mistrust generalized hatred. I feel like one of those twelfth century monks raving on about how evil women are and how they must cover themselves up completely when they go out lest they lead men into evil thoughts. The assumption that the men are the ones who matter, and that the women exist only in relation to them, is so silent and underrunning that ever we never picked it up until recently. But after all, look at what we read. I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Freud and Erikson; I read de Montherlant and Joyce and Lawrence and sillier people like Miller and Mailer and Roth and Philip Wylie. I read the Bible and Greek myths and didn't question why all later redactions relegated Gaea-Tellus and Lilith to a footnote and made Saturn the creator of the world. I read or read about, without much question, the Hindus and the Jews, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, St.Paul, Luther, Sam Johnson, Rousseau, Swift...well, you understand. For years I didn't take it personally.
So now it is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking ~ Marilyn French

As the generations pass they grow worse. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last, when no man is angry any more at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would rise and put down rulers that oppress them. ~ Greek Myth On The Iron Age

Greek myths are heroic, noble and tragic; but the American Dream is heroic, comical, and uplifting. Americans are a people in whom overweening ambition is rewarded, not punished. The Wright Brothers did not have their wings melt when they flew too high. Perhaps their wings were more soundly built than those of Icarus. ~ John C. Wright

Hero," said Machaon to his sister who was still muttering to her gods. "Please stop. Surely the gods would have heard you by now … let's try not to annoy them. ~ Sulari Gentill

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Plato utterly condemns the poets for publishing trivial, false and indeed wicked stories about the gods, such as that they fight with each other, or are overcome by emotions like grief, anger, mirth. Reluctantly, he will not allow Homer in his Republic, and he is very angry with the tragic poets for spreading unworthy ideas of the Deity.

It may well be that there were inferior tragic poets who deserved Plato's strictures, but so far as concerns the tragic poets whom we know, Plato's attack is absurd. It is the attack of a severely intellectual philosopher who was also more of a poet than most poets have contrived to be; one who invented some of the profoundest and most beautiful of Greek myths. 'There is a long-standing quarrel', says Plato, 'between philosophy and poetry.' So there was, on the part of the philosophers, and most of all in Plato's own soul. ~ H.D.F. Kitto

Since ancient times, sacred texts from around the world foretold about a time period in human history when a mighty demi-god would appear on earth. Whether we call this figure Perseus, Krishna, or Messiah, he is epitomized in the figure of Jesus Christ - the modern equivalent of which is Superman! ~ Eli Of Kittim

You know, Mac,"Cadmus said still looking out the window. "We may have to work on the way we tell our story …apparently it's not amusing enough."

"I'll try to include a joke between 'he bled to death'and 'the city burned'."Machaon responded tersely. ~ Sulari Gentill

Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants. ~ William Butler Yeats

All the superhero stuff is Greek myths and Greek gods, wearing tights and capes. That's what they are. That's what I gravitate towards. ~ Louis Leterrier

Apparently the book says that at certain times in your life everything goes wrong and you don't know which way to turn and it is as if everywhere around you stainless steel doors are clamping shut like in Star Trek. What you have to do is be a heroine and stay brave, without sinking into drink or self-pity and everything will be OK. And that all the Greek myths and many successful movies are all about human beings facing difficult trials and not being wimps but holding hard and thus coming out on top. The ~ Helen Fielding

If Morris and his contemporaries were possessed by the medieval Christian imagination and the ancient sagas, the moderns looked further back to the ancient world, and rewrote the Greek myths and legends to suit their own ideas about society and history. ~ A.S. Byatt

I should have learned my lesson from Greek myths, really. It so doesn't pay to fall in love with a god. It's either you get transformed – flower, bull, you name it, the gods can be that petty – or you just get…crushed. ~ Marian Tee

Music does propagate myths and people have tried to make that myth more than it was. ~ Deborah Curtis

Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas [Greece] and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you. ~ Alexander The Great

By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can't solve extreme poverty and disease isn't just mistaken. It is harmful. That's why in this year's letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same. ~ Bill Gates

One of the most widespread myths about the deal is that the Administration is outsourcing the security of our ports to a company from the United Arab Emirates. ~ Kit Bond

You can learn technological things, you can learn about specific things, but the real problems that people deal with in any subject, existential subjects or romantic subjects, you never learn anything. So you make a fool of yourself when you're 20, you make a fool of yourself at 40, at 60 at 80. The ancient Greeks were dealing with these problems. They screwed up all the time. People do now. ~ Woody Allen

Most myths are true, at least in part. ~ Cassandra Clare

Nowadays myths can be practically momentary: transmitted throughout the world by 24-hour news and the internet, they spread virally, entering the minds of tens and hundreds of millions of people in minutes or hours. Are these true myths, or mass-manufactured fantasies? At times they can be both. In recent years images of resistance to tyranny have been relayed around the world by mass media, many of them captured on mobile phones by the resisters themselves. The myths of revolution that moved the resisters were reinforced, for a time, by the media that make the news. But myths survive for only as long as they are enacted by those who accept them. As popular uprisings go through their normal sequence of rebellion, anarchy and renewed ~ John N. Gray

Fairy tales are just true stories that humans have chosen not to believe in any more. Besides, this is Myths and Legends where dreams and nightmares come to life. ~ Stacie Simpson

Only the sixth sense can expose what the other five have hidden. ~ Matthew A. Petti

I wondered how Setne knew that. Maybe he could 'smell' a demigod's aura the way Greek monsters could. Or maybe my prankster friends the Stoll brothers had written I'M A DEMIGOD on my forehead in permanent marker and Annabeth had decided not to tell me. That happened occasionally. ~ Rick Riordan

What I love about jazz is that it's full of legends, full of myths. It's an oral history because it started in New Orleans and Kansas City, under the radar. ~ Damien Chazelle

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
'The one thing I regret,' he said,
'Is that it cannot speak! ~ Lewis Carroll

Among the disciples of Jesus, it seems most likely that at least Philip was bilingual in Aramaic and Greek. ~ Jay Parini

The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. ~ Gilbert Murray

To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge. ~ Isaac Asimov

Through a throat that just a moment ago had stopped functioning all together she barely croaked, "Marry you? Why in the world would you want to marry me?" Her question seemed too breathless to her own ears and she cursed her body's involuntary response to his presence just mere feet from her.
"Who said anything about wanting?" he growled just a few inches from her face, as he quickly pushed past her and entered the study with his long lithe stride, ever the confident Greek male. ~ Julie Garver

So, Ariadne was the babe with the ball of twine and the plan. ~ Claire Cross

The textbooks of history prepared for the public schools are marked by a rather naive parochialism and chauvinism. There is no need to dwell on such futilities. But it must be admitted that even for the most conscientious historian abstention from judgments of value may offer certain difficulties.
As a man and as a citizen the historian takes sides in many feuds and controversies of his age. It is not easy to combine scientific aloofness in historical studies with partisanship in mundane interests. But that can and has been achieved by outstanding historians. The historian's world view may color his work. His representation of events may be interlarded with remarks that betray his feelings and wishes and divulge his party affiliation. However, the postulate of scientific history's abstention from value judgments is not infringed by occasional remarks expressing the preferences of the historian if the general purport of the study is not affected. If the writer, speaking of an inept commander of the forces of his own nation or party, says "unfortunately" the general was not equal to his task, he has not failed in his duty as a historian. The historian is free to lament the destruction of the masterpieces of Greek art provided his regret does not influence his report of the events that brought about this destruction.
The problem of Wertfreíheit must also be clearly distinguished from that of the choice of theories resorted to for the interpretation of facts. In dealing ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Athens will again be the host of the Games in 2004, but there are rumors that they might be switched if the Greeks don't begin to construct the sites faster. ~ Bill Toomey

Long ago, darkness reigned over the night. People were afraid and remained inside their shelters from sundown until sunrise. The goddess Selene saw their fear and gave light to their nocturnal world by driving her moon chariot across the starry sky. She followed her brother Helios, who rode the sun and caught his shining rays on her magnificent silver chariot, then cast them down to earth as moonbeams. She felt pride in the way the earthlings were comforted by her light.
But one night when she had abandoned her chariot to walk upon the earth, she noticed that in times of trouble many people lost all hope. Their despair bewildered her. After considering their plight, she knew how she could make her moon the greatest gift from the gods.
From then on she drove around the earth and each night caught her brother's rays from a different angle. This way the face of the moon was everchanging. People watched the moon decrease in light every night, until it could no longer be seen from the earth. Then after three nights of darkness, a crescent sliver returned and the moon increased in light until it was fully illuminated as before. Selene did this to remind people that their darkest times can lead them to their brightest.
The ancients understood Selene's gift in the lunar phases. Each night when they gazed at the moon, they knew Selene was telling them to never give up hope. ~ Lynne Ewing

Our souls are full of Gothic arches, pinnacles, twisted traceries we cannot shake off, and of which Greek minds knew nothing. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

There are a lot of myths around Mental Health sufferers. People are very biased towards them. This should change. People should try to understand and not outcry them. The stigma should be erased. ~ Maria Karvouni

The poets are a harmless little folk, with their dreams and raptures and heaven full of Greek gods that they carry about with them in their fantasy. But they become wicked as soon as they presume to hold their ideal up to reality and then flail the latter angrily, when they should have nothing at all to do with it. They would, nevertheless, remain harmless if they were only granted their free little place in reality un disturbed and not compelled through crowding and pressure to cast a backward glance at it, for it reaches beyond the clouds, and they themselves cannot survey it all and must cling to the stars as provisory border points, of which, however, who knows how many are yet today invisible, their light still in the process of journeying down to us. ~ Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann

What's put that secret smile on your face?" Phillip asked, a teasing light in his eyes. "Don't tell me Henry was actually pleasant company." "He was," Emma allowed. "Very knowledgeable." Julian said, "What did you do out there all that time - that's what I'd like to know." He leaned back in his chair and watched her face with a knowing smirk. "Lizzie said the two of you were alone out there for quite some time." "Oh?" Phillip asked, clearly surprised. "And what did you find to talk about with our laconic Henry?" "Greek mythology, mostly," Emma said casually, wanting to end any romance rumors before they might begin. "I found it very interesting." "You would," Rowan muttered. ~ Julie Klassen

the book of genesis received its English name from the Greek translation of the Heb word toledot, which is used thirteen times in Genesis and is translated as "story" (2.4), "record" (5.1), or "line" (10.1). In Heb, it is known, like many books in the Tanakh, by its first word, bereshit, which means, "In the beginning. ~ Adele Berlin

Do you know how to mix our powers?' I asked.

Carter's shoes squished in the mud. 'Well … not exactly.'

'Oh, please,' Sadie said. 'That's easy. Carter, give your wand to Percy.'

'Why?'

'Just do it, brother dear. Annabeth, do you remember when we fought Serapis?'

'Right!' Annabeth's eyes lit up. 'I grabbed Sadie's wand and it turned into a Celestial bronze dagger, just like my old one. It was able to destroy Serapis's staff. Maybe we can create another Greek weapon from an Egyptian wand. Good idea, Sadie.'

'Cheers. You see, I don't need to spend hours planning and researching to be brilliant. Now, Carter, if you please. ~ Rick Riordan

Greek pederasty honored the erotic magnetism of male adolescence in a way that today brings police to the door. Children are more conscious and perverse than parents like to think. ~ Camille Paglia

Mega biblion, mega kakon (Big book, big evil) ~ Callimachus

The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as "arduous" is as early as fifty-five for men and fifty for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than six hundred Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, writers, musicians, and on and on and on. ~ Michael Lewis

The Apology (of Socrates) is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he defends himself against the charges of being a man "who corrupted the young, did not believe in the gods, and created new deities". "Apology" here has its earlier meaning (now usually expressed by the word "apologia") of speaking in defense of a cause or of one's beliefs or actions (from the Greek απολογία). ~ Voltaire

This heroic story is not just another myth. Myths are fictions, but this one is true-true to the best of our knowledge, which is the only truth we can have. We believe it because we have reasons to believe it. As we learn more, we can show which parts of the story continue to be true, and which ones false-as any of them might be, and any could become.

And the story belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity-to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in its being. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better tha coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance. ~ Steven Pinker

Christ is to the souls of men what the sun is to the world. He is the center and source of all spiritual light, warmth, life, health, growth, beauty, and fertility. Like the sun, He shines for the common benefit of all mankind
for high and for low, for rich and for poor, for Jew and for Greek. Like the sun, He is free to all. All may look at Him, and drink health out of His light. If millions of mankind were mad enough to dwell in caves underground, or to bandage their eyes, their darkness would be their own fault, and not the fault of the sun. So, likewise, if millions of men and women love spiritual "darkness rather than light," the blame must be laid on their blind hearts, and not on Christ. "Their foolish hearts are darkened." (John 3:19; Romans 1:21.) But whether men will see or not, Christ is the true sun, and the light of the world. There is no light for sinners except in the Lord Jesus. ~ J.C. Ryle

Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem. ~ John Dryden

Once we face our fear, once we treat our anxiety itself as a thing, we can then choose otherwise. Instead of filling the unknown in our minds with expectations of the tragic, we can choose to fill the void with a different expectation – the expectation of adventure.
For example, Seneca, the Greek philosopher, refused to be afraid of what he did not know. When asked if he was afraid of dying, he replied, "Absolutely not, why should I be afraid of something I know nothing about." His orientation toward the unknown of death was not to fill the gap in his understanding with horror but potential. ~ David W. Jones

Stay with me?" His fingers wound into my hair, and his arm tightened around me. "Always. ~ Amalia Carosella

There is a trend going on in world these days for when people see they can't achieve something or reach somewhere, they start blaming their race, color or religion for it. They give examples or learn from those 99% who could't achieve something, ignoring those 1% who are already there regardless of their color, caste or religion. Only difference between these 99% and those 1% is, they were working hard, trying to break the myths and barriers when other 99% were just sitting at home in the comfort of their couches and crying for their failures, blaming it either on their race or color.Celebrating your races or religions and crying blaming it for your failure everyday, won't take anyone anywhere. Go out, move your feet and work. ~ Shivam Singh

I don't see any option except to stick to the plan. Split up, infiltrate, find out why they're here. If things go bad - " "We use the backup plan," Piper said. Jason hated the backup plan. Before they left the ship, Leo had given each of them an emergency flare the size of a birthday candle. Supposedly, if they tossed one in the air, it would shoot upward in a streak of white phosphorus, alerting the Argo II that the team was in trouble. At that point, Jason and the girls would have a few seconds to take cover before the ship's catapults fired on their position, engulfing the palace in Greek fire and bursts of Celestial bronze shrapnel. ~ Rick Riordan

In the karmic worldview, you are queer because of karma, and it may be a boon or curse. In the one-life worldview, you are queer because you choose to be so, to express your individuality or to defy authority (Greek mythology) or God/Devil wills it so (biblical mythology). ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

He's at war with himself. Why doesn't he surrender to his feelings and stop fighting himself? He has hang-ups that I must cut him loose from. ~ Steven L. Sheppard

Atheism ... goes back to the Ancient Greek (a - a negative prefix, theos - god), evidencing the antiquity of the outlook of those who saw no presence of God (or gods) in their everyday lives, or who even denied the very existence of God (or gods). There are different types of atheism, but atheism in one form or another has existed in every civilization.

[T]he concept "atheist" partially coincides with such notions as "skeptic," "agnostic," and "rationalist" and it borders with such notions as "anticlerical," "God fighter" (theomachist), and "God abuser" (blasphemer).

It is wrong to identify an atheist as one who denies God, though this is what opponents of atheism usually claim. If such people exist, it would probably be more correct to call them the "verbal" murderers of God, for the prefix a- means denying as elimination. ... I would like to stress that the prefix a- does not necessarily mean rejection. It can mean "absence of." For example, "apathy" means "absence of passion." Thus, the concept "atheist" does not necessarily mean nihilism. ~ Valerii A. Kuvakin

Plato
who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to "real" people and everyday events
knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings. ~ Bruno Bettelheim