At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries....

Perfect sanity is a myth propagated by straitjacket salesmen.

Now, I pray you, cast yourself into a different world, a different trail of thought; step into a place where dragons live and breathe, where they are as real in touch and voice as you...

I have a very clear memory of my first encounter with myth, sitting in a mobile library and travelling, at the same time, with Theseus on the road to Athens. By the time we’d met,...

The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100,000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather...

The loss of that oral tradition and the breakdown of communication between generations had set my family adrift, floating aimlessly without history and all its accumulated experience to guide us. We need context, we need...

The supernatural worldview is causing a great number of otherwise intelligent people to cling to a collection of atavistic concepts that have not, and never will serve humanity in any ultimately beneficial way. Any benefits...

In the blink of an eye, the fairytales told to children were as real as death and taxes. Vampires, shifters, trolls, demons and creatures of myth, were as real as the air we breathe.

Believe reality is what you were taught was myth.

As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.

For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them,...

Being what we are, rational but also animate, amphibians who start from the world of sense and proceed through myth and metaphor to the world of spirit. I do not see how we could have...

As with . . . even the written word, the remote overview is one more wrenched perspective that developing civilization has glued, collagelike, to the once unified experience of life.

[When asked about his thoughts on gods]I think it’s like a movie that was way too popular. It’s a story that’s been told too many times and just doesn’t mean anything. Man lived on the...

It was not enough that food aplenty was within Man’s grasp: he wanted more.It was not enough that prey surrendered themselves to Man according to the natural order: Man wanted to cook his prey. Man...

Caucasian”, most of them little realizing that the term and its history are as constructed as anything sold in the fantasy section of a bookstore.These are proven strategies, but I have no interest in them....

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have...

There are plenty of atheists in foxholes. What I don’t see are Christians in foxholes. If a Christian soldier takes a bullet to the knee, he will undoubtedly first call for a medic, not a...

the dank night is sweeping down from the skyand the setting stars incline our heads to sleep.

Security is a strange thing, a myth that the brain allows in exchange for a brief moment of peace.

In a segment of the Sermon on the Mount, appearing in Matthew 5, Jesus is reported to have set six new teachings of his against six old Jewish teachings. The latter are introduced by such...

It was a rainy night. It was the myth of a rainy night.

The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.

We have seen that a myth could never approached in a purely profane setting. It was only comprehensible in a liturgical context that set it apart from everyday life; it must be experienced as part...

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.

People add color to their story because they think it happened in black and white.

It was only much later that he was made flesh and blood [in the Gospels] on paper. Thus Christ was created as a literary creation.

An interesting contrast between the geology of the present day and that of half a century ago, is presented by the complete emancipation of the modern geologist from the controlling and perverting influence of theology,...

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from...

There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to ”realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have ”succeeded,” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is ”realizable.”...

I am weary of your quarrels,Weary of your wars and bloodshed,Weary of your prayers for vengeance,Of your wranglings and dissensions

Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and ourselves as one of the ways to understand the world around us. Every culture has its creation myth for...

A swishing is often heard in the Carpathians, the sound as of a thousand mill wheels turning in the water. It is the dead men gnawing at the dead man, in the abyss without issue,...

A Tinker’s Debt is Always Paid:Once for a simple trade.Twice for freely given aid.Thrice for any insult made.

Myth: Feeding the banking sector gobs of welfare cash will bring about a recovery. Fact: Our leaders are only dedicated to preserving power

Know, child, that the One God—He is so vast that He cannot be moved, else the Universe falls. Nor can He answer, for the very act of opening His Mouth is Movement, indeed the greatest...

Are Child Molesters Really Just Victims Themselves? “All victims are offenders,” one professional challenged me at a conference, “and all offenders are victims. How does your work address that?”My work doesn’t address that because I...

it’s a myth, you know;he doesn’t have to draw bloodfor him to leave a scar.

The belief that myths are somehow less true than the symbolic dream we call ‘reality’ may be the greatest myth of all.

To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore.

P nă și lectura are o funcție mitologică, nu numai pentru că înlocuiește rostirea miturilor în societățile arhaice și literatura orală, care se mai păstrează în comunitățile rurale din Europa, ci mai ales pentru că...

Myth is what we call other people’s religion.

Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew. From west and beyond west, into the wind and through it, they came past countless moons and suns. One laughed and briefly wore...

..and why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the seaand what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl…

Combine two words, Myth and History. What do you get? Mystery.

Myths of the heroes speak most eloquently of man’s quest to choose life over death.

Alte Männer sind eine rachsüchtige Brut. Sie beneiden junge Männer um ihre Kraft und verübeln jungen Frauen ihre Verführungsmacht.

First bubble baths. Now Disney parks. You’re shattering every creep vampire myth I’ve ever heard.

We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives...

The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites...