“
Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun.
--From the poem "Doom of the Exiles", written 16 April 1954
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
“
I'm drawn, Icarus to the sun. I've been burned already, and yet here I am again.
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2))
“
I know exactly why Icarus flew so high: when you’ve spent too long in the dark, you’ll melt your own wings just to feel the sun on your skin.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (Starling House)
“
Icarus flew too close to the sun, but at least he flew.
”
”
Jeremy Robert Johnson (Skullcrack City)
“
I am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when something goes wrong. I think I have a dream, but most of the days I’m still sleeping. The grass is cut. It smells like strawberries. Today I finished four books and cleaned my drawers.
Do you believe in a God? Can I tell you about Icarus? How he flew too close to the sun?
I want to make coming home your favourite part of the day. I want to leave tiny little words lingering in your mind, on nights when you’re far away and can’t sleep. I want to make everything around us beautiful; make small things mean a little more. Make you feel a little more. A little better, a little lighter. The coffee is warm, this cup is yours. I want to be someone you can’t live without.
I want to be someone you can’t live without.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson (He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss)
“
You have married an Icarus;
He has flown too close to the sun
”
”
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton: The Revolution)
“
Laments of an Icarus
The paramours of courtesans
Are well and satisfied, content.
But as for me my limbs are rent
Because I clasped the clouds as mine.
I owe it to the peerless stars
Which flame in the remotest sky
That I see only with spent eyes
Remembered suns I knew before.
In vain I had at heart to find
The center and the end of space.
Beneath some burning, unknown gaze
I feel my very wings unpinned
And, burned because I beauty loved,
I shall not know the highest bliss,
And give my name to the abyss
Which waits to claim me as its own.
”
”
Charles Baudelaire
“
Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.
”
”
E.O. Wilson
“
I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances)
“
How oft the warmth of the sun above
Makes a pretty young girl dream of love.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
“
Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall.
”
”
Dwight Longenecker (The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty)
“
Do I, then, belong to the heavens?
Why, if not so, should the heavens
Fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,
Luring me on, and my mind, higher
Ever higher, up into the sky,
Drawing me ceaselessly up
To heights far, far above the human?
Why, when balance has been strictly studied
And flight calculated with the best of reason
Till no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-
Why, still, should the lust for ascension
Seem, in itself, so close to madness?
Nothing is that can satify me;
Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;
I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,
Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.
Why do these rays of reason destroy me?
Villages below and meandering streams
Grow tolerable as our distance grows.
Why do they plead, approve, lure me
With promise that I may love the human
If only it is seen, thus, from afar-
Although the goal could never have been love,
Nor, had it been, could I ever have
Belonged to the heavens?
I have not envied the bird its freedom
Nor have I longed for the ease of Nature,
Driven by naught save this strange yearning
For the higher, and the closer, to plunge myself
Into the deep sky's blue, so contrary
To all organic joys, so far
From pleasures of superiority
But higher, and higher,
Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescence
Of waxen wings.
Or do I then
Belong, after all, to the earth?
Why, if not so, should the earth
Show such swiftness to encompass my fall?
Granting no space to think or feel,
Why did the soft, indolent earth thus
Greet me with the shock of steel plate?
Did the soft earth thus turn to steel
Only to show me my own softness?
That Nature might bring home to me
That to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,
More natural by far than that improbable passion?
Is the blue of the sky then a dream?
Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,
On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxication
Achieved for a moment by waxen wings?
And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?
To punish me for not believing in myself
Or for believing too much;
Too earger to know where lay my allegiance
Or vainly assuming that already I knew all;
For wanting to fly off
To the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Sun & Steel)
“
I feel the familiar pull—I am drawn, Icarus to his sun. I have been burned already, and yet here I am again.
~Anastasia
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2))
“
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water,
And the expensive ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
Azur smiled as if he were expecting these answers and said, 'The Malady of Certainty.'
Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn't survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty. This he called, the converse nature of convictions.
”
”
Elif Shafak (Havva'nın Üç Kızı)
“
Rare stories traveled of those who rose too high, the ships who sailed like Icarus towards the sun.
And like him, they crashed and burned for their arrogance.
”
”
Katherine McIntyre (The Airship Also Rises (Take to the Skies #3))
“
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
don't fly too close to the sun," Tess Calls. "you'll burn the tips of your wings. Stay right with me. i'll keep you safe.
”
”
Marcella Pixley
“
We were both getting what we needed, though I could have done without him. It turned out he could not do without me. He likened his relationship with me to Icarus. He was Icarus and I was the sun. Lines like these, which I wholly believed and still do, made me sick to my stomach. What kind of a girl wants to be a sun over a country she doesn’t even want to visit.
”
”
Lisa Taddeo (Animal)
“
You have married an Icarus
He has flown too close to the sun
”
”
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton: The Revolution)
“
He would be the sun Taran mac Delbaith flew too close to.
”
”
Kellen Graves (Lord of Silver Ashes (Rowan Blood, #2))
“
Sun-brushed hands trailed circles on his wings, opening new ways to touch the sky. The dance is the dalliance of the whispers, unsaid desires brighter than eternal suns. His teeth of flint and steel, the sun boy’s lips like ichor.
”
”
Grace Curley (The Light that Binds Us)
“
You have married an Icarus;
He has flown too close to the sun.
”
”
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton: The Revolution)
“
And it’s suddenly, blindingly obvious. He’s too gloriously good-looking. We are poles apart and from two very different worlds. I have a vision of myself as Icarus flying too close to the sun and crashing and burning as a result.
~Anastasia
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
“
Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn’t survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty.
”
”
Elif Shafak (Three Daughters of Eve)
“
We are not Hades and Persephone, Flower Girl. Never were. I didn't drag you down a dark path.You pulled me into the light. Helpless, I followed. Blindly, I got burned. I am Icarus. I love you as he loved the sun. Too close. Too hard. Too fast.
”
”
L.J. Shen (The Villain (Boston Belles, #2))
“
He (Daedalus) would follow that bearing, the sun on his shoulders and the past slipping away.
”
”
Robert William Case (Daedalus Rising - The True Story of Icarus)
“
Yes, Icarus fell to earth after flying too close to the sun, but what a glorious fall it must have been. Almost worth the flaming wings tied to his arms, waving helplessly in a shower of
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Burnt Tongues)
“
Some upstarts always try to get closer to the source of creation by ascending to the source's level. The story of Icarus is of course a parable about the folly of such an effort. Get too close to the sun and your hubris will get you burned. Yet in the eyes of twenty-first-century capitalist culture, which worships at the twin altars of the individual and technology, Icarus had initiative. And his melted wings do not represent some deep character flaw; he just needed better beta testers.
”
”
Marcus Wohlsen (Biopunk: Kitchen-Counter Scientists Hack the Software of Life)
“
All great achievements arose from dissatisfaction. It is the desire to do better, to dig deeper that propels a civilization to greatness. All of us have heard the story of Icarus, the young boy who took the wings his father built for him. Wings that were meant to carry him over the ocean to freedom and used them instead for a joyride. For a brief moment Icarus felt what it was like to live like a god, to touch the sun, to soar above the common man. And for doing so he payed the ultimate price. Like Icarus we too have been given gifts: knowledge, education, experience. And with these gifts comes the responsibility of choice. We alone decide how our talents are bestowed upon the world. This is our destiny and we hold it in the palm of our hands.
”
”
Todd Bowden Apt Pupil
“
I think I finally understand the saying like a moth to a flame. I’m the moth. My heart flutters like the paper thin wings. And he is the flame, incendiary, scorching my soul.
He inhales so heavily, like he’s been holding his breath under water. He presses his lips against mine and tugs at my hair gently. My head falls back and my mouth falls open. His tongue, slick as silver, dances with mine.
I’m wrong. I’m not a moth. I’m Icarus and I’ve flown too close to the sun.
”
”
Elden Dare (Born Wicked (The Wicked Sorcer Series #1))
“
Here is what they don’t tell you:
Icarus laughed as he fell.
Threw his head back and
yelled into the winds,
arms spread wide,
teeth bared to the world.
(There is a bitter triumph
in crashing when you should be
soaring.)
The wax scorched his skin,
ran blazing trails down his back,
his thighs, his ankles, his feet.
Feathers floated like prayers
past his fingers,
close enough to snatch back.
Death breathed burning kisses
against his shoulders,
where the wings joined the harness.
The sun painted everything
in shades of gold.
(There is a certain beauty
in setting the world on fire
and watching from the centre
of the flames.)
”
”
Fiona
“
To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph"
Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.
”
”
Anne Sexton
“
4. The whole Icarus-flying-too-near-the-sun-and-plummeting-out-of-the-sky thing? That's real. Same with the Sirens who lure you to death with their irresistible song, and the odalisque so beautiful anyone who looks at her dies. And remember: as badass as Grendel was, Beowulf hadn't seen anything until he went up against Grendel's mother. I know, I know - I thought they were just myths too. But the fact is, sometimes, if you don't want to meet a tragic end, your only option is to avert your gaze, tie yourself to the mast with cotton in your ears, or ascend a little less close to the Vault of Heaven.
”
”
Todd Hanson (Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me)
“
I am on warp-speed headed directly for the sun; I am Icarus." (opening line of 'Girl on a Bar Stool', new / CreateSpace version)
”
”
Tim Roux (Girl on a Bar Stool)
“
For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain I would feel just to reach her.
”
”
Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
He was fucking Icarus and he’d finally flown too close to the sun.
”
”
Onley James (Maniac (Necessary Evils, #7))
“
drawn, Icarus to his sun. I’ve been burned already, and yet here I am again.
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2))
“
If she’s the sun, then I’m Icarus, flying close for a kiss of her gleaming rays. She looks like a fallen angel, the kind that lures men to their deaths.
”
”
Gigi Styx (Taming Seraphine (Morally Black, #1))
“
For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her
”
”
Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
Icarus approaching the sun. Touching it. How good it felt. The light. The warmth. How could she not want to bask in it forever?
”
”
Emiko Jean (Mika in Real Life)
“
These two Joes—the nasty bully and the starry-eyed dreamer—were my father. Growing up, the difficulty was knowing just which Joe would rise with the sun that day.
”
”
Pythia Peay (American Icarus: A Memoir of Father and Country)
“
I was arrogant. It's a classic story of hubris. I'm like Icarus whose wings melted before he could fuck the sun.
”
”
Nicky Nichols
“
It’s not enough nearly to survive. One needs to flourish. One must not look to fly low. One must emulate Icarus and try to fly as high as possible. Damn the sun. Let’s make heat-resistant wax for our wings!
”
”
Jack Tanner (The Source of Dreams: When Human Imagination Died)
“
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
[...]
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
”
”
W.H. Auden
“
Some would say that the winged boy loved the sun, loved him with his very own soul and every fibre in his body. His father had warned him: Don’t fly too close to the sun, boy, you know better. But who was he to listen?
”
”
Grace Curley (The Light that Binds Us)
“
What’s the matter, Jess? Why are you sad?’ And she’d have to explain that she wasn’t sad, just tired, though how she could be so tired in the middle of the day with the sun shining and everything, she didn’t know. It made her feel ashamed.
”
”
Helen Oyeyemi (The Icarus Girl)
“
Certainty was to curiosity what the sun was to the wings of Icarus. Where one shone forcefully, the other couldn't survive. With certainty came arrogance; with arrogance, blindness; with blindness, darkness; and with darkness, more certainty.
”
”
Elif Shafak
“
The bad news about this grandiosity is that trying to avoid it by being humble only indicates the enormity of your struggle. I hate to disturb anyone's good day, but a really humble person may be having more trouble with grandiosity than someone who thinks they are pretty hot stuff. If you get depressed a lot because you think you are worthless, it indicates a mighty struggle with this little god within. You need to feel like you weigh a thousand pounds in your leaden depression so you won't float off into the sun and be destroyed by an Icarus complex. From this point of view, what is depression? It is your friend. Thank God for your depression, because it is the ballast on your psychic balloon. Without it, you would be flying into the sun of psychosis.
”
”
Robert L. Moore (Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity)
“
There are galaxies within the human mind, and madness wants to risk everything for the daring flight, reckless and beautiful and crazed. Everyone knows Icarus fell. But I love him for the fact that he dared to fly. Mania unfurls the invitation to fly too high, too near the sun, which will melt the wax of the mind, and the fall will be terrible.
”
”
Jay Griffiths
“
He told me once I was flawless in his eyes, because my imperfections made me that way. Imperfections build character, but in the end he is close, but might as well as not exist. So, where is flawless now? He too saw me fall off the pedestal. He called me beautiful all of the time, even when I said I failed or I was a mess he still found me beautiful, but that isn't how he sees me anymore. I'm not beautiful or flawless. I'm just something like the sun, and he's the Icarus who flew too close. I don't think I'll ever see him again, and it is best that that is the case. It is best for me to marry, and forget, because I can't go back. And even if I could, it would not change the facts as they are. I loved him too much. I needed him too much. I craved the very sound of his voice. He was the world to me. He was the very breath I breathed. And it almost ruined me. And it almost ruined him. They don't tell you that about love. How it can ruin you by its mere existence. How it can be so deep that it devours you. And that...is most frightening.
”
”
Jennifer Megan Varnadore
“
If you fly too high, the sun will melt your wings. If you fly too low, the sea’s dampness will weigh you down. The story rang true to Desmond. The market’s exuberance and implosion were in league with the allegory of Icarus, but so was life. People who flew too high—who lived beyond their means and ability—were bound for failure. As were those who never took a chance. Despite
”
”
A.G. Riddle (Pandemic (The Extinction Files, #1))
“
Most often, couples who get together after months or years of online infatuation enact a twenty-first-century version of Icarus flying too close to the sun with his waxen wings: the real-life exposure quickly melts the fiber-optic cable that was holding the couple aloft, and they plummet into the sea, where they tend to flail about for a while, trying to rescue their former magic.
”
”
Daniel Jones (Love Illuminated: Exploring Life's Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers))
“
Icarus! It’s not as if I have forgotten all names. I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances)
“
He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though not to Rousseau. Perhaps this was because one side of him - the side easily moved by passion - was too close to Rousseau. Instead, he approached the author of 'Candide', who was closer to another side of him - the cool and richly intellectual side.
At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun - as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun.
”
”
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
“
Daedalus said you shouldn’t fly too low. If you do, the water will fatally weigh down your wings and you will surely perish. Don’t fly too high either. The sun will melt the wax holding your wings together, and you will plunge to your death. So, moderation in all things. Always follow the middle course. How dull. Set your sights higher. Go as high as you can, all the way to the top. We are the people of the peaks, not the middle of the road.
”
”
Joe Dixon (Why God Should Go to Hell: How God Is Outside the Moral Order)
“
Light is the in-utterable name of God; the YHWH form. It is the emotional life of a bee and the distance to Icarus, the farthest visible star. It is the finding of compassion amidst tyranny, the networked communication between trees, and the whale song. Light is woven through the gauze of grief and is “the limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns” (John Lennon). It is what Catholic theologians called “the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable, the thing we cannot conceive” (John Chrysostom) . “Tell me, if you have understanding. What is the way to the place where the light is distributed?” (Job 38:4) And unable to answer, in dumb obliviousness, instead, we point at the Sun
”
”
Dr Aisling O'Donnell (THE MAP: Archetypes of the Major Arcana)
“
Anastasia,” he whispers. “What are you doing to me?” “I could say the same to you,” I whisper back. Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his car door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I’m reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can’t. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow.
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
“
We wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus'. It's a Fable... It's about this bloke named Icarus, right, and one day he goes "'Ello, I think I'm gonna fly about!", so he builds some wings out of wax and feathers, right, and he goes flying about like a cunt through the air, right, and he goes up to this ball of fire called 'the sun' that hides obscured by the clouds over the UK, right... So he goes up to the ball of fire and the wings melt, 'cause they're made out of wax, right, so he goes plummetin', plummetin' down to the earth, and he fuckin' dies, right... alright, so we wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus', right, and it's basically sayin' "Hey man, wake up! Don't go flyin' about near the sun unless you're in an airplane," right, 'cause the wings are metal, right, and they won't melt, right... So, here's a song that's workin' on two different levels at once, right... 'cause the wings of the plane are made out of metal, right... and we play Metal music, right... two dimensional, see? So Maiden's always thinking... Always thinking.
”
”
Bruce Dickinson
“
The party spills over with guests, from the ballroom to the front lawn. It’s nighttime, but the house is lit up, bright as the sun. All around me diamonds glitter. We’ve reached that tipping point where everyone is sloshed enough to smile, but not so much they start to slur. There’s almost too many people, almost too much alcohol. Almost too much wealth in one room. It reminds me of Icarus, with his wings of feather and wax. If Icarus had a five-hundred-person guest list for his graduation party. It reminds me of flying too close to the sun. I snag a flute of champagne from one of the servers, who pretends not to see. The bubbles tickle my nose as I take a detour through the kitchen. Rosita stands at the stove, stirring her world-famous jambalaya in a large cast iron pot. The spices pull me close. I reach for a spoon. “Is it ready yet?” She slaps my hand away. “You’ll ruin your pretty dress. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.” We have caterers who make food for all our events, but since this is my graduation party, Rosita agreed to make my favorite dish. She’s going to spoon some onto little puff pastry cups and call it a canape. I try to pout, but everything is too perfect for that. Only one thing is missing from this picture. I give her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Rosita. Have you seen Daddy?” “Where he always is, most likely.” That’s what I’m afraid of. Then I’m through the swinging door that leads into the private side of the house. I pass Gerty, our event planner, who’s muttering about guests who aren’t on the invite list. I head up the familiar oak staircase, breathing in the scent of our house. There’s something so comforting about it. I’m going to miss everything when I leave for college. At the top of the stairs, I hear men’s voices. That isn’t unusual. I’m around the corner from Daddy’s offic
”
”
Skye Warren (The Pawn (Endgame, #1))
“
what if
when icarus fell
apollo caught him
before he hit the sea,
arms as warm as the sun,
but safer.
what if
when ariadne cast the rope
across a broken branch
aphrodite stepped in
with a reminder that this,
this is not the kind of love
you die for.
what if
when achilles
was ready for war
ares appeared with a smile
and said “you win well when you win,
but what are you unwilling
to lose if you lose?”
and achilles knew the answer.
if you could
retell the tale wouldn’t you want
to tell it kinder? wouldn’t you
want to give them peace, even love,
where you could?
”
”
poemsforpersephone (@tumblr)
“
I know exactly why Icarus flew so high. When you've spent too long in the dark, you'll melt your own wings just to feel the sun on your skin.
”
”
Alix. E. Harrow
“
For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her.
”
”
Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
I don't want you to be like Icarus. I won't let you fly too close to the sun.
”
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Cierra Martinez (Paint Me In Full Color)
“
I am the middling type, for whom flirtation is neither a demeaning jape nor an Icarus-like tilt at the sun. Flirting with a middling girl is a dangerous business, because we might - indeed, we probably will - take it seriously. And before the poor chap knows it, there'll be a bun in the oven and a hastily arranged rendezvous at the Registry Office.
”
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Graeme Macrae Burnet (Case Study)
“
Even at the risk of losing it all, I would fall her. For if I were Icarus and she were the sun. I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her.
”
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Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
The moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew that she was more than the sun and the stars. She was everything, and I was never going to let her go. Even at the risk of losing it all, I would fall for her. For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her.
”
”
Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
Even at the risk of losing it all, I would fall for her. For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her
”
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Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
know exactly why Icarus flew so high: when you’ve spent too long in the dark, you’ll melt your own wings just to feel the sun on your skin.
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Alix E. Harrow (Starling House)
“
In Greek legend, Icarus flew too close to the Sun, and the heat melted his wings and he fell to his death. But "melting" is a phase change which is the function of temperature, a measure of internal energy, which is the integral of incident power flux over time. His wings didn't melt because he flew too close to the Sun, they melted because he spent too much time there.
Visit briefly, in little hops, and you can go anywhere.
”
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Randall Munroe (What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
“
One thing I do know, and I believe you know it too, is that what he is doing goes against the very grain of the universe. He’s taking the path of Icarus, and no matter how you mix the wax, it melts when it gets too close to the sun.
”
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David Niall Wilson (The DeChance Chronicles Omnibus: Books I - IV)
“
I’m just feeling a little like Icarus.” The nurse gave him a blank stare. “Of Greek myth. Flew too close to the sun? Manmade wings? It all went back to the Minotaur, plotwise. Doesn’t everything?
”
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Ryan C. Thomas (Alien Aberrations)
“
She considers a tray of flaky 'jesuites,' their centers redolent of frangipani cream, decorated with violet buds preserved in clouds of black crystal sugar. Or 'dulce de leche' tarts- caramelized swirls on a 'pate sucree' crust, glowing with chocolate, tiny muted peaks, ruffles of white pastry like Edwardian collars. But nothing seems special enough and nothing seems right. Nothing seems like Stanley. Avis brings out the meticulous botanical illustrations she did in school, pins them all around the kitchen like a room from Audubon's house. She thinks of slim layers of chocolate interspersed with a vanilla caramel. On top she might paint a frosted forest with hints of white chocolate, dashes of rosemary subtle as deja vu. A glissando of light spilling in butter-drops from one sweet lime leaf to the next. On a drawing pad she uses for designing wedding cakes, she begins sketching ruby-throated hummingbirds in flecks of raspberry fondant, a sub-equatorial sun depicted in neoclassical butter cream. At the center of the cake top, she draws figures regal and languid as Gauguin's island dwellers, meant to be Stanley, Nieves, and child. Their skin would be cocoa and coffee and motes of cherry melded with a few drops of cream. Then an icing border of tiny mermaids, nixies, selkies, and seahorses below, Pegasus, Icarus, and phoenix above.
”
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Diana Abu-Jaber (Birds of Paradise)
“
You have married an Icarus, he has flown to close to the sun.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton: An American Musical)
“
You have married an Icarus, he has flown too close to the sun.
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Philipa Soo
“
I think dizzily that I know exactly why Icarus flew so high: when you’ve spent too long in the dark, you’ll melt your own wings just to feel the sun on your skin.
”
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Alix E. Harrow (Starling House)
“
He was introduced to the washing machine, the gas cooker, the radio, the vacuum cleaner. ‘Here are your maids,’ he said. ‘You’re not wrong.’ ‘Where are the thousand-league boots?’ ‘We don’t have those yet.’ ‘Invisibility cloak? Sun-resistant wings of Icarus?’ ‘Likewise.’ He smiled. ‘You have enslaved the power of lightning,’ he said, ‘and you’ve used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help.
”
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Kaliane Bradley (The Ministry of Time)
“
Helios was brilliant in this sun. He had to shield his gaze against it. Had to look at the space beside him through the shadow of his own hand. Helios’s hair spilled across the pillow, violent, sanguine, eyelashes flax-gold. He was blood in milk, he was the skin of a Pink Lady apple, he was honey warmed in a hot spoon over tea. He was looking at Icarus lazy and indulgent. Not surprised in the least to wake up not alone.
”
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K. Ancrum (Icarus)
“
He wondered at the picture they made. Icarus dark and small, in the water, head tilted back in devout wonder. Helios, red like the sun, gold in the light, standing above him.
”
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K. Ancrum (Icarus)
“
I love in the same way Icarus must’ve yearned for the sun. So desperate to be close, to climb in someone else’s skin. To be fully seen and understood and accepted. It wasn’t that he wanted to escape—or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to be engulfed by that feeling and forget reality. To leave behind the earth entirely. If the sun loved me, I wouldn’t hesitate to strap on wings and fly all the way across the universe. I’d open my arms and welcome the burn. It’s better than the alternative: cold, alone, empty. To the sun: Burn me up. Love me. Swallow me whole.
”
”
S. Massery (The Pucking Coach's Daughter)
“
It was not I who had cast Icarus into shadow, making his shadow monstrous. I had merely stepped between him and the sun for a moment – the moment that separated him from childhood and the achievement of death.
”
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Michael Ayrton (Testament of Daedalus)
“
HERE LIES GAGE ARLINGTON: BELOVED TEAMMATE, TALENTED HOCKEY PLAYER, SELFLESS SON SIMPED TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN AND WENT UP IN FLAMES LIKE ICARUS
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Celeste Briars (The Cruelest Kind of Hate (Riverside Reapers, #3))
“
But what good is the metaphor of Icarus and the sun, when the light of the moon or the flicker of candle-flames has replaced that golden orb of day so utterly? I have no wax wings to flee the monster’s maze. I cannot fly, but only fall.
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Julia Leijon (The Viscount's Prey)
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The foot-long blades were half green, half brown as they whipped back and forth in the breeze, swaying in violent unison. The sun rose above the hills with a temper, unusual for this time of year. Intermittent cool temperatures had syphoned the green out of the leaves until they browned enough to break free, falling to the ground like Icarus, scorched and devoid of purpose.
”
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Nick Roberts (Genesis (The Exorcist's House #2))
“
Armoring may make a person a mystic, because he can't embrace the fact that God is in him. He looks at God "out there," and he says, "If I pray, if I purify myself, I'll solve all my problems." But this is never possible, because a person who goes into spirituality without having worked out his negativities — his ego defenses, his resistances — flies high like Icarus, but when he reaches the burning sun, he falls into the sea, the sea of life, and drowns. It is only through transcending and working through the obstacles to life that the human being can rise into realms of creation and spirituality... In contrast to the mystic, armoring may make a person brutal. When he expresses his feelings, he is a monster. Then he experiences terror, because he feels that if he perceives his genuine feelings, he will be extinguished.
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John C. Pierrakos (Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature)
“
I’d skated too close to the sun, an Icarus who thought she was Nancy Kerrigan. God heard my self-aggrandizing thoughts and pushed me down on the ice. No, just kidding, that’s not how God works. (I don’t know how God works, but I have to assume that’s not it. Right?)
”
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Kelly Williams Brown (Easy Crafts for the Insane: A Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things)
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Just scarred—the strongest of hearts always are. The earth and ocean don’t thank the sun for its light and warmth. The sun doesn’t thank them for their companionship. So, don’t thank me. Don’t ever think you have to thank anyone. Because that’s what we are to each other. Two beings that give as much as we receive and everything you need, I will always give you.
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Lucy Smoke (Fall With Me (Gods of Hazelwood: Icarus, #2))
“
Even at the risk of losing it all, I would fall for her. For if I were Icarus and she were the sun. I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her.
”
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Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
SIMPED TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN AND WENT UP IN FLAMES LIKE ICARUS
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Celeste Briars (The Cruelest Kind of Hate (Riverside Reapers, #3))
“
Don’t you worry that she’s like Icarus, she’ll fly too close to the sun one day?’ Graham laughed again. ‘But, son, she can fly.
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Julie Caplin (The Christmas Castle in Scotland (Romantic Escapes, #9))
“
Even at the risk of losing it all, I would fall for her. For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings. Her beauty would be worth the pain that I would feel just to reach her.
”
”
Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
“
For if I were Icarus and she were the sun, I would still fly to her with my waxen wings.
”
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Avina St. Graves (Death's Obsession)
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I am Icarus, she thought. Caught in the heat of the sun.
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Isabel Agajanian (Modern Divination (Spells for Life and Death, #1))
“
Icarus is . . . I don’t know: aspiration and daring but also arrogance and hubris. It’s a cool story, the boy who flew too close to the sun so that the wax holding the feathers in his wings melted, but it’s also a great tragic metaphor for overreach, not knowing your limitations.
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Andrew Hart (Lies that Bind Us)
“
In ancient days two aviators procured to themselves wings. Daedalus flew safely through the middle air across the sea, and was duly honored on his landing. Young Icarus soared upwards towards the sun till the wax melted which bound his wings, and his flight ended in fiasco. In weighing their achievements perhaps there is something to be said for Icarus. The classic authorities tell us that he was only "doing a stunt," but I prefer to think of him as the man who certainly brought to light a constructional defect in the flying machines of his day. So too in science. Cautious Daedalus will apply his theories where he feels most confident they will safely go; but by his excess of caution their hidden weaknesses can not be brought to light. Icarus will strain his theories to the breaking-point till the weak joints gape. For a spectacular stunt? Perhaps partly; he is often very human. But if he is not yet destined to reach the sun and solve for all time the riddle of its constitution, yet he may hope to learn from his journey some hints to build a better machine
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Arthur Stanley Eddington (The Internal Constitution of the Stars (Cambridge Science Classics))
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Afraid of nightfall closing in; the lambent god lifts my run. Flying now on Icarus wings, cannot help but chase the Sun.
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John Casey (Raw Thoughts)
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Spider is a bright, hot sun and I’m Icarus, flying way too close.
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Ilsa Madden-Mills (Spider (English, #3))
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I go to Fethiye every summer, the corn and sunflower fields, palm trees have always attracted me with their nature and the variety of crops shines like a sun in the Anatolian geography, I think I have succumbed to this beautiful geography like icarus succumbing to the beauty of the sun. Every piece of land on the Mediterranean is created as if there should be one in the world. Every civilization that lives on the Mediterranean has left stories and artifacts to the world that cannot be made like the same. Every plant that grows and every meal that is cooked has become the foundations of our day. The clear Mediterranean shines like a sun that still continues to illuminate the world, and it makes us feel the past with its unchanging fields despite every changing place.
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Ata Bikbay
“
He thinks of the Fall, of angels tumbling forever in fire, and Icarus, who had flown too close to the sun. He had thought of the agony of the fall, the terror of it, but never that it might be joyful. Lucifer had not wanted to fall, but neither had he wanted to serve, and as Jace gathered Clary close against him, closer than he had ever thought they could be, he wondered if it was only in the act of falling that one could truly be free.
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Cassandra Clare