Greek Mythology Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Greek Mythology. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Don't feel bad, I'm usually about to die.
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Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
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But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.
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Plato (The Symposium)
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That is β€” your friend?" "Philtatos," Achilles replied, sharply. Most beloved.
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S. "Go," she says. "He waits for you." In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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Being a hero doesn’t mean you’re invincible. It just means that you’re brave enough to stand up and do what’s needed.
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Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
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We’d read about sirens in English this fall; Greek mythology bullshit about women so beautiful, their voices so enchanting, that men did anything for them. Turned out that mythology crap was real because every time I saw her, I lost my mind.
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Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
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You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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Time, which sees all things, has found you out.
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Sophocles (Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1))
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Do you think we can be friends?” I asked. He stared up at the ceiling. β€œProbably not, but we can pretend.
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Priya Ardis (Ever My Merlin (My Merlin, #3))
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Nosoi?” Percy planted his feet in a fighting stance. β€œYou know, I keep thinking, I have now killed every single thing in Greek mythology. But the list never seems to end.” β€œYou haven’t killed me yet,” I noted. β€œDon’t tempt me.
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Rick Riordan (The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo, #1))
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Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.
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Tom Robbins
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What happened to the alpha-wolf?" "LEGOs." "Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn't it an island? "He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle.
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Ilona Andrews (Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1))
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I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms. The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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Vane grabbed me. β€œDuLac, let’s chat.” Chat. British-speak for β€œStand still while I yell at you.
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Priya Ardis (My Merlin Awakening (My Merlin, #2))
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Gaia visited her daughter Mnemosyne, who was busy being unpronounceable.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.
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Edgar Allan Poe (Ligeia)
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...She nourishes the poison in her veins and is consumed by a secret fire.
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Virgil (The Aeneid)
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I think: this is what I will miss. I think: I will kill myself rather than miss it. I think: how long do we have?
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? It was enough to watch him win, to see the soles of his feet flashing as they kicked up sand, or the rise and fall of his shoulders as he pulled through the salt. It was enough.
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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Ladies and Gentlemen, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.
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Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
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All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.
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Nathan Reese Maher
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Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. β€œWhy so hostile, love?” β€œYou whacked me on the head with a ball!” β€œYou deserved it.
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Priya Ardis (My Merlin Awakening (My Merlin, #2))
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There’s a Greek legendβ€”no, it’s in something Plato wroteβ€”about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That’s why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.
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Nancy Garden (Annie on My Mind)
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They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn
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Aeschylus (Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1))
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I caught his hand. β€œWhat do you want me to do?” Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. β€œTomorrow, I need you to die.
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Priya Ardis (My Merlin Awakening (My Merlin, #2))
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Icarus should have waited for nightfall, the moon would have never let him go.
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Nina Mouawad
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For the world seems never to offer anything worthwhile without also providing a dreadful opposite.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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I love Greek Mythology, wish there was a TV series, like being human or smallville, but with the series based around Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Holla Mayne!
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Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
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Despite being the only one of us who owned the game, I wasn't very good at Resurrection. As I watched them tramp through a ghoul-infested space station, Ben said, "Goblin, Radar, goblin." I see him." Come here you little bastard," Ben said, the controller twisting in his hand. "Daddy's gonna put you on a sailboat across the River Styx." Did you just use Greek mythology to talk trash?" I asked. Radar laughed. Ben started pummeling buttons, shouting, "Eat it, goblin! Eat it like Zeus ate Metis!
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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The Greeks created gods that were in their image; warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate, but vengeful.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.
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Priya Ardis (Ever My Merlin (My Merlin, #3))
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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.
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Donald W. Black (DSM-5 Guidebook: The Essential Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
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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.
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Nikita Gill (Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters)
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In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.
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Ovid (Metamorphoses)
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Gaia listened carefully to this wise counsel and - as we all do, whether mortal or immortal - ignored it.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?
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Aeschylus (Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1))
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I looked at the titles on the bookshelf and found a book on Greek mythology next to a book of poetry, which was flanked by a book on German philosophy. "How are these organized?" "They're not." I turned to him. "How do you find anything? There must be thousands of books here." "I like the search. It's like visiting old friends.
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Julianne Donaldson (Edenbrooke (Edenbrooke, #1))
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Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lost memories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreams play when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?
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Nathan Reese Maher
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Behold, my children!" she said. "The instrument of my revenge. I will call it a scythe!" The Titans muttered among themselves: What is that for? Why is it curved? How do you spell scythe?
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Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Gods)
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I'm a damsel, I'm in distress, I can handle this. Have a nice day!
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Walt Disney Company
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But the queen--too long she has suffered the pain of love, hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood, consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [...] His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling-- no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.
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Virgil (The Aeneid)
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Do not worry about your contradictions - Persephone is both floral maiden and queen of death. You, too, can be both.
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Nichole McElhaney (A Sisterhood of Thorns and Vengeance)
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Why would anyone love a monster?' asked Perseus. 'Who are you to decide who is worthy of love?' said Hermes. 'I mean, I wasn't...' 'And who are you to decide who is a monster?' added the messenger god.
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Natalie Haynes (Stone Blind: Medusa's Story)
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He liked such sharpness, for there was nothing in him that had any blood you might spill.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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You make the rarest canvas, love
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Madeline Miller (Galatea)
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When lust descends, discretion, common sense and wisdom fly off and what may seem cunning concealment to one in the grip of passion looks like transparently clumsy idiocy to everyone else.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.
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Nathan Reese Maher
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THE MARK OF ATHENA BABY!!!!!!
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Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
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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!
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Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
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You wanted to ride, my nasty girl, so fucking ride,” Sander challenged.
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Setta Jay (Searing Ecstasy (The Guardians of the Realms, #7))
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I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation he was to me.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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Will you tell me who hurt you? I imagine saying, 'You.' But that is nothing more than childishness.
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Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
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Annabeth and I were relaxing on the Great Lawn in Central Park when she ambushed me with a question. β€œYou forgot, didn’t you?” I went into red-alert mode. It’s easy to panic when you’re a new boyfriend. Sure, I’d fought monsters with Annabeth for years. Together we’d faced the wrath of the gods. We’d battled Titans and calmly faced death a dozen times. But now that we were dating, one frown from her and I freaked. What had I done wrong? I mentally reviewed the picnic list: Comfy blanket? Check. Annabeth’s favorite pizza with extra olives? Check. Chocolate toffee from La Maison du Chocolat? Check. Chilled sparkling water with twist of lemon? Check. Weapons in case of sudden Greek mythological apocalypse? Check. So what had I forgotten? I was tempted (briefly) to bluff my way through. Two things stopped me. First, I didn’t want to lie to Annabeth. Second, she was too smart. She’d see right through me. So I did what I do best. I stared at her blankly and acted dumb.
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Rick Riordan (The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus))
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I sort of fell." "Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?
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Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
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I can’t help but ask, β€œDo you know where you are?” She turns to me with a foreboding glare. β€œDo you?
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Nathan Reese Maher
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the dank night is sweeping down from the sky and the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.
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Virgil
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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.
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Priya Ardis
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There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomach in a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in the darkness of the grave, how it frightens me beyond all things.
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Nathan Reese Maher
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Even Cronus, the Titan who literally had his kids for breakfast, would find these facts hard to swallow.
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Tai Odunsi (Cupid's Academy: Argus' Big Fat Greek Wedding Ring)
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Pandora's Box could not be unopened, no one could return to Eden.
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Selena Kitt (Temptation (Under Mr. Nolan's Bed, #1))
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I will not sentence myself to such a living death.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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The seeding of Gaia gave us meaning, a germination of thought into shape. Seminal semantic semiology from the semen of the sky.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone." β€” Kate Daniels
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Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
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It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea-lions, lions, human beings and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile.
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Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
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Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind’s courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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Yield, and I'll eat your little pussy... first.
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Setta Jay (Hidden Ecstasy (The Guardians of the Realms))
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Helios thought he looked pretty hot, and he had an annoying habit of calling the sun his "chick magnet.
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Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Gods)
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Little by little I began to listen better: to the sap moving in the plants, to the blood in my veins. I learned to understand my own intention, to prune and to add, to feel where the power gathered and speak the right words to draw it to its height. That was the moment I lived for, when it all came clear at last and the spell could sing with its pure note, for me and me alone.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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Come up when you’re finished down here.” He raised a brow. β€œI don’t have any alarms to check up there.” That sexy sparkle was back in her eyes. β€œThen I guess you’ll just have to check me.
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Lisa Kessler (Dance of the Heart (Muse Chronicles, #6))
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Faith that you will find a way to make wine out of your sour grapes.
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Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
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I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.
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Priya Ardis (Ever My Merlin (My Merlin, #3))
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Most people assume that a muse is a creature of perfect beauty, poise and grace. Like the creatures from Greek mythology. They're wrong. In fact, there should be a marked absence of perfection in a muse--a gaping hole between what she is and what she might be. The ideal muse is a woman whose rough edges and contradictions drive you to fill in the blanks of her character. She is the irritant to your creativity. A remarkable possibility, waiting to be formed.
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Kathleen Tessaro (The Perfume Collector)
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What Pandora did not know was that, when she shut the lid of the jar so hastily, she for ever imprisoned inside one last daughter of Nyx. One last little creature was left behind to beat its wings hopelessly in the jar for ever. Its name was ELPIS, Hope.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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Nothing shall part us in our love till Thanatos (Death) at his appointed hour removed us from the light of day.
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Apollonius of Rhodes
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She kissed his chest. "Thanks for letting me into your heart." He tucked her hair behind her ear. "You walked in like you had a key.
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Lisa Kessler (Lure of Obsession (Muse Chronicles, #1))
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You’re the shield, and I’m the sword.
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Amanda Bouchet (Breath of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #2))
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Apollo, sacred guard of earth's true core, Whence first came frenzied, wild prophetic word...
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.
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Christopher Nolan
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Did Bach ever eat pancakes at midnight?
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Nathan Reese Maher
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Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.
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E.O. Wilson
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She rose on her tiptoes and brushed a slow kiss to his lips. "This doesn't have to be a relationship, okay? Just let me be your muse." He bent to taste her again and smiled. "And I'll be your Guardian.
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Lisa Kessler (Lure of Obsession (Muse Chronicles, #1))
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She covered his hand with hers over her abdomen. His was so much bigger than hers and had probably fired guns, rifles, and god knew what else, but right here, right now, his tenderness broke down her will as sure as any grenade.
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Lisa Kessler (Legend of Love (Muse Chronicles, #2))
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I will never let you go, and I will never leave you. I would defy creatures, and Gods, and terrible, brutal queens to keep you safe and by my side. I would move Mount Olympus itself to hold you in my arms and feel your heart beat against mine. You are my soul, and yes, I will fight for you and protect you until my dying breath.
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Amanda Bouchet (Breath of Fire (Kingmaker Chronicles, #2))
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-’Tell me’, he said, β€˜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.
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Madeline Miller (Circe)
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The Greek word for 'everything that is the case', what we could call 'the universe', is COSMOS. And at the moment - although 'moment' is a time word and makes no sense just now (neither does the phrase 'just now') - at the moment, Cosmos is Chaos and only Chaos because Chaos is the only thing that is the case.
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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I have a pullout couch, and I could sleep in the living room. You can have the bedroom." "I'm sorry. No." Mel put her hand on his chest, her eyes sparkling. "I have to draw the line there. I should at least get sex out of this deal or this really would be a tragedy.
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Lisa Kessler (Lure of Obsession (Muse Chronicles, #1))
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Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium-- Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.-- ''[kisses her]'' Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!-- Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return to Helen for a kiss. O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appear'd to hapless Semele; More lovely than the monarch of the sky In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms; And none but thou shalt be my paramour!
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Christopher Marlowe (Dr. Faustus)
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Childhood is bound like the Gordian knot with my memories of the Black Sea, and I still feel its waters welling up within me today. Sometimes these waters are leaden, as grey as the military ships that sail on their curved expanses, and sometimes they are blue as pigmented cobalt. Then would come dusk, when I would sit and watch the seabirds waver to shore, flitting from open waters to the quiet empty vastlands in darkening spaces behind me, the same birds Ovid once saw during his exile, perhaps; and the same waters the Argonauts crossed searching for the fleece of renewal. And out in the distance, invisible, the towering heights of Caucasus, where once-bright memories of the fire-thief have transmuted into something weird and many-faceted, and beyond these, pitch-black Karabakh in dolorous Armenia.
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Paul Christensen (The Heretic Emperor)
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Tragedy is born of myth, not morality. Prometheus and Icarus are tragic heroes. Yet none of the myths in which they appear has anything to do with moral dilemmas. Nor have the greatest Greek tragedies. If Euripides is the most tragic of the Greek playwrights, it is not because he deals with moral conflicts but because he understood that reason cannot be the guide of life.
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John Gray (Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals)
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Brooding, simmering and raging in the ground, deep beneath the earth that once loved him, Ouranos compressed all his fury and divine energy into the very rock itself, hoping that one day some excavating creature somewhere would mine it and try to harness the immortal power that radiated from within. That could never happen, of course. It would be too dangerous. Surely the race had yet to be born that could be so foolish as to attempt to unleash the power of uranium?
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Stephen Fry (Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1))
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I can not remember telling my parents that I was studying classics, they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard-put to name one less useful in Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys of an executive bathroom. Now I would like to make it clear in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date for blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction. The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I can not criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor. And I quite agree with them, that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty, entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression, It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something by which to pride yourself, but poverty itself, is romanticized only by fools. But I feared at your age was not poverty, but failure... Now, I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted, and well educated, that you have never known heartbreak, hardship, or heartache. Talent and intelligence, never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates... ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure.
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J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
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We don't worship Satan, we worship ourselves using the metaphorical representation of the qualities of Satan. Satan is the name used by Judeo-Christians for that force of individuality and pride within us. But the force itself has been called by many names.We embrace Christian myths of Satan and Lucifer, along with Satanic renderings in Greek, Roman, Islamic, Sumerian, Syrian, Phrygian, Egyptian, Chinese or Hindu mythologies, to name but a few. We are not limited to one deity, but encompass all the expressions of the accuser or the one who advocates free thought and rational alternatives by whatever name he is called in a particular time and land. It so happens that we are living in a culture that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, so we emphasize Satan. If we were living in Roman times, the central figure, perhaps the title of our religion, would be different. But the name would be expressing and communicating the same thing. It's all context.
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Anton Szandor LaVey (The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey)
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My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with secondhand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don't; it's a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected. True, they're not for the faint of heart. Wild and chaotic, capricious and frustrating, there are certain physical laws that govern secondhand bookstores and like gravity, they're pretty much nonnegotiable. Paperback editions of D. H. Lawrence must constitute no less than 55 percent of all stock in any shop. Natural law also dictates that the remaining 45 percent consist of at least two shelves worth of literary criticism on Paradise Lost and there should always be an entire room in the basement devoted to military history which, by sheer coincidence, will be haunted by a man in his seventies. (Personal studies prove it's the same man. No matter how quickly you move from one bookshop to the next, he's always there. He's forgotten something about the war that no book can contain, but like a figure in Greek mythology, is doomed to spend his days wandering from basement room to basement room, searching through memoirs of the best/worst days of his life.) Modern booksellers can't really compare with these eccentric charms. They keep regular hours, have central heating, and are staffed by freshly scrubbed young people in black T-shirts. They're devoid of both basement rooms and fallen Greek heroes in smelly tweeds. You'll find no dogs or cats curled up next to ancient space heathers like familiars nor the intoxicating smell of mold and mildew that could emanate equally from the unevenly stacked volumes or from the owner himself. People visit Waterstone's and leave. But secondhand bookshops have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.
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Kathleen Tessaro (Elegance)
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Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped- not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor.
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Rosamund Hodge (Cruel Beauty)
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Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..." It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (Lavinia)
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Tell me something. Do you believe in God?' Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?' 'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?' 'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...' 'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.' Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks: 'There was Manicheanism...' 'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...' Snow pondered for a while: 'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.' I kept on: 'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...' 'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.' 'If you're going to take what I say literally...' ...Snow asked abruptly: 'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.
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StanisΕ‚aw Lem (Solaris)