Icarus Falls Quotes

Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.

But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

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.

A single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity. It went on and on, until my own lungs were burning. “What bird are you calling?” I asked finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. The Bird Man stopped whistling. He grinned, so that I could see all his pebbly teeth. “You.

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?

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.

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.

After all, Gotham's a city where angels fly on the wings of Icarus...Up, up they go and then...down, down, down they fall. Until we all stand, revealed for who we truly are underneath.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

But surely every man is his own god: Fortune refuses her aid to those who merely pray, and take no action.

Falling from a great height, the wings on his back were nothing but melted wax and scattered feathers. He never should have flown so close, no matter how warm and decadent Cylvan's light had been.

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

He took a deep breath. ‘To marry me,’ he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory.

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.

Rags to Riches (rise) Riches to Rags (fall) Man in a Hole (fall, then rise) Icarus (rise, then fall) Cinderella (rise, then fall, then rise) Oedipus (fall, then rise, then fall)

Perhaps that, too, is why they love her. She flies like Icarus, and they are waiting for her to fall.

And so, for the person willing to follow it in patience, it can lead to the divine destination, to the vision of God the Creator and Redeemer. By contrast, the Gnostic’s self-devised ascent is bound to end, like the flight of Icarus, in a crash both tragic and grotesque. The surge beyond faith into the abyss of God ends in a blinded fall into inhumanity. The Godhead that seemed to hold the promise of plenitude (pleroma), reveals itself to be anonymity, a silent void, the empty abyss of man himself, the projection of his own deficiency onto the wall of the absolute.

From this skull-rock strange golden roots throw Ikons and incidents; the man in the mask Manipulates. I am the fool that falls And never learns to wait and watch, Icarus eternally damned, the dupe of time . . .

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.

The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy.

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.

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.

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.

He would keep what he would always believe had to be a false memory of her falling like a booted Icarus out of a lighted sky in which there was somehow falling snow and her mouth open in a lovely O that had started to shape a word, and her long legs against the electric light, shooting out of the blue plastic square that rose like a kite lifting on a whirlwind and one of her boots flying what seemed the length of the block

Icarus did not survive his fall. We can only hope Daedalus fares better.

LA owed me. LA was like a beautiful painting that I could only see afterhours through the museum window. It was like a Firebird blasting some catchy tune until the light turns green and it speeds off, leaving me stuck with Katy Perry in my head the rest of the day. LA had promised me a lot and it had paid off very fucking little.

She was Bloomingdale’s, not Victoria Secret. She was vanilla, not peach. She was Paul Reiser, not Lenny Bruce. This was not my kind of chick.

By the end of the interview, George and I had clicked....I mean, we weren't BFF's spray-painting hearts and our initials on freeway underpasses or anything. But we seemed to understand each other.

She never let her intelligence get in the way of a good time.

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.

translated into English as Icarus Fallen, she suggested that the condition of modern European man was the condition that Icarus would have been in had he survived the fall.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. — Jack Gilbert, Falling and Flying

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.

… the leap into heaven, into fame, into legend—then the fall back to earth (guernseyed Icarus) to the whistle’s shrill tweet.

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

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.

Instead of giving me his cock as I expect though, his hands clamp on my hips and he pushes me away. “Float on your back,” he commands. I blink as my body lifts to the rise of the next wave that moves around us—through us. A shudder escapes me as he pulls my body up even further. Naked everywhere save for my breasts, Isaac pulls my legs over his shoulders and I’m forced to tighten my stomach muscles so that my head doesn’t disappear beneath the surface. Air squeezes into my lungs as his head dips and the heat of his breath brushes over my sensitized clit and pussy. “Oh, God!” I cry out at the first touch of his mouth against me. His lips move, opening. His tongue strokes out, slipping through my folds until he finds my clit. He laps at it, sucking it into his mouth and gingerly scraping his teeth over the trembling little bundle of nerves. My insides squeeze and tighten. I’m gasping for breath, trying to remain stable enough to float, and at the same time, failing horribly as water cascades over my face. Still, he doesn’t stop. His mouth devours me, his tongue pushing deep enough to leave me

wanting more. Wanting something thicker and harder. Sparks dance behind my eyes. My thighs tighten around his head, my muscles contracting with the agony of being breathless and the euphoria of my impending orgasm. My hands flutter down to him, holding onto whatever I can reach. His shoulders. His hair. He dives in harder, eating at me like he means to consume me. His mouth is sinful, evil, wicked. It’s every dark desire I’ve ever had but have been too afraid to voice. He tortures me until I swear I’m going to pass out. The world closes around me as water runs over my face. My body is both frozen and on fire. Pieces of my skin are flicking off as I come apart. Fear. Desire. Want. Need. Confusion. The glittering stars explode in my head, and then darkness encroaches. Nothingness. Absence. I come to with Isaac’s arms around my legs and back. Our bodies sway side to side as he moves through the waves, his feet slow beneath the water and then more firmly as it drops down. The surface of the ocean drops from our shoulders to our stomachs and then down as the sand grows more sturdy beneath his feet. “You awake?” he asks carefully when my hand reaches up and touches his chest. Water sluices down his hard flesh, over the muscles covered by tan skin. “Yeah.” My voice is little more than a rasp. “I think you tried to kill me, though,” I admit. He doesn’t respond. I’d at least expected a chuckle. When I look up into his face, though, the

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.

There's a beep. And, in that fraction of a second, I see it all → . . Me in bed, covered in lipstick and talcum powder; falling down the coach aisle; smashing into a hat-stall; climbing under a table; thirty hands in the air; spinning under a spotlight; jumping in the snow; a ponytail, cut off; sitting on a catwalk; standing on a doorstep; my first kiss, on a television set. I see a Japanese fish market and an octopus; a sumo stage; a glass box and a hundred dolls; a shining lake; a zebra crossing; a brand-new sister. I see New York and a governess; a fairground ride; a planetarium; a party; Brooklyn Bridge. Toilet paper and Icarus; dinosaur biscuits; posters; Marrakesh and a monkey; parties of stars. Picnics and coffee; an advertising agency; a doppelganger; an Indian elephant and firework clouds of paint; a cafe, filled with pink. I see Sydney and diving and a fashion show that glittered with gold. In short: I see a whole world, opening behind me. And a new world, opening in front. A world that I fit into perfectly.

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.

Every girl has that one guy they know they shouldn’t be with, but something about the way our bodies sing to one another when we’re naked fogs over our logical brains.

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.

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.

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.

I’m Icarus before a fall, and my heart tells me not to get my hopes up.

There’s a W. H. Auden poem called “Musée des Beaux Arts,” written in December 1938, just after Kristallnacht. In it is a description of a painting by Brueghel, in which the old master depicts Icarus falling from the sky while everyone else, involved in other things or simply not wanting to know, “turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster” and goes about daily tasks. I thought about that poem a lot over the next few days of the fair as I chatted about books, kept my appointments, and ate frankfurters off cardboard-thin crackers. The poem begins, “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.

From the ascending jet the cities recede like a wilderness of expanding constellations like the heroic past. If engines falter what to fall back on what underlies us but a universal darkness pocked with fleeing stars? We do most fear to fall into no thing but falling. from “Icarus by Night

The computer scientists found that a huge percentage of stories fit into one of six relatively simple structures. They are, borrowing a chart from Reagan’s team: Rags to Riches (rise) Riches to Rags (fall) Man in a Hole (fall, then rise) Icarus (rise, then fall) Cinderella (rise, then fall, then rise) Oedipus (fall, then rise, then fall)

Celestina’s arm tightened around the back of his head and he nosed deeper into the curve of her neck, falling back asleep. He had never been this warm in his life, had never been held like this—held at all. It felt like his bones were wrapped in a quilt made of sunlight.