Mythology Quote Wall

“He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands. I will teach about him who experienced all things... He brought back a tale of the times before the Flood.”

“Humans are born, they live, they die. But when the gods created mankind, they allotted death to our race, and life held in their own hands. Fill your belly, day and night make merry.”

“When on high the heavens had not been named, firm ground below had not been called by name, naught was except primeval Apsu, their begetter, and Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all.”

“First of all Chaos came into being, but next broad-bosomed Earth, the solid seat for ever of all the deathless ones who possess snowy Olympus.”

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again.”

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.”

“I caused mortals to cease foreseeing their doom... and placed within them blind hopes. Furthermore, I stole for them the flame of fire.”

“Creatures of a day! What is someone? What is our nothingness? Man is a dream of a shadow. Yet when radiance from Zeus descends, a brilliant light shines upon mortals and their life is sweet.”

“Cattle die, kinsmen die, and you yourself shall die; but I know one thing that never dies: the fair fame of every one who has earned it.”

“I know that I hung on a wind-rocked tree, nine whole nights, wounded with a spear, consecrated to Odin, myself to myself.”

“An ash I know, Yggdrasil its name, a tall tree bathed in glistening loam; thence come the dews that fall into the dales; it stands ever green above the well of Urd.”

“The sun darkens, earth sinks into the sea, from heaven turn the bright stars; steam spurts forth and life-nourishing fire, high flames lick heaven itself.”

“My heart, my mother! My heart, my mother! My heart whereby I came into being! May there be no witness against me, may no one oppose me in the judgment.”

“How manifold are your deeds! They are hidden from the face of men, O Sole God, like whom there is no other! You created the earth according to your desire, whilst you were alone.”

“Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the unlettered as well as the learned. For no one attains the limit of artistry, nor is any craftsman fully perfected.”

“Then was not non-existence nor existence: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?”

“You have a right to your labor alone, never to its fruits. Let not the fruit of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.”

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth.”

“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly... Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

“There was only stillness and silence in the darkness, in the night. Only the Creator, the Former, Tepeu and Gucumatz, the Forefathers, were in the water surrounded by light.”

“Is it true that on earth we live? Not forever on earth: only a little while here. Even jade shatters, even gold breaks, even quetzal feathers tear apart. Not forever on earth: only a little while here.”

“I am the wind that breathes upon the sea, I am the wave of the ocean, I am the murmur of the billows, I am the bull of seven battles, I am the vulture upon the rocks, I am a beam of the sun.”

“Speech was first invented when Ogma, son of Elatha, devised the Ogham runes to prove his subtlety, making trees the guardians of secret wisdom.”

“When the world was primeval, the soil was young and drifted about like floating oil or like a jellyfish, there sprouted forth something like a reed-shoot.”

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.”

“Myth tells of how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality.”

“Myths are first and foremost psychic manifestations that represent the nature of the soul. The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif.”