Quotes
Quotes about Myth
One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.
On the treshold of old age I find myself pretty much without roots - except, as it were, mythical or historical ones that would better do in a TV series than in real life
Religion and sex spoke equally of life; they met in the agricultural myths out of which the most sophisticated faiths had been generated.
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves. -Mahatma Gandhi.
For oute of olde feldys, as men sey, Comyth al this newe corn from yere to yere; And out of old bokis, in good fey, Comyth al this newe science that men lere.
Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: A certain group of scholars, mostly German or influenced by German protestant theology, has rushed to abandon positions before they were attacked, and to demythologize the Gospel message when there was no clear evidence that intelligent minds outside the Church were any more frightened by her mystery than by her morals.
Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 It is easy to throw angels and demons and the cosmic character and relevance of Christ's work upon the scrap heap of ancient superstition and mythology, and to consider them but a manner of speech that is utterly irrelevant for our space age. But if we should feel entitled to throw out one part of the witness of Ephesians to Christ, why not the rest of it also: for instance, Christ's Lordship over the church and in the heart? It is unfair and scarcely honest to consider the Bible or parts of it as a cake from which we can pick out merely the raisins we happen to like. Speaking the truth in love and witnessing to the biblical Christ may imply the necessity to speak also of some very strange things.
Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian will be anxious to point out that the classical images which have been used, with more or less success, to depict different aspects of the Redemptionâthe winning of a battle, the liberation of captives, the payment of a fine or debt, the curing of a disease, and so onâare not to be interpreted literally, any more than, when we say that the eternal Word "came down from Heaven", we are describing a process of spatial translation. For here we are dealing with processes and events which, by the nature of the case, cannot be precisely described in everyday language... The matter is quite different with such a statement as that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary; for, whatever aspects of the Incarnation outstrip the descriptive power of ordinary language, this at least is plainly statable in it. It means that Jesus was conceived in his mother's womb without previous sexual intercourse on her part with any male human being, and this is a straightforward statement which is either true or false. To say that the birth... of Jesus Christ cannot simply be thought of as a biological event, and to add that this is [not] what the Virgin Birth means, is a plain misuse of language; and no amount of talk about the appealing character of the "Christmas myth" can validly gloss this over.
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Mythology: the body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deitits and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive;" or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the cultureâin literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
When we put things off until some future-probably mythical-Laterland, we drag the past into the future. The burden of yesterday's incompletions is a heavy load to carry. Don't carry it.
It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.
Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words.
The test of a true myth is that each time you return to it, new insights and interpretations arise.
A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another.
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.
Noting is more difficult than competing with a myth.
The average child is an almost non- existent myth. To be normal one must be peculiar in some way or another.
The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.
Various kinds of ideas can be classified by their relationship to the authentication process. There are ideas systematically prepared for authentication ("theories"), ideas not derived from any systematic process ("visions"), ideas which could not survive any reasonable authentication process ("illusions"), ideas which exempt themselves from any authentication process ("myths"), ideas which have already passed authentication processes ("facts"), as well as ideas known to have failed- or certain to fail- such processes ("falsehoods" - both mistakes and lies).
