Gods That Died Quotes & Sayings

This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts ... — Terry Pratchett

I learned it many, many years ago from a man who didn't know who he was, Your Majesty. It was a distant place where two lands meet and gods have died. But that is unimportant. — Brandon Sanderson

I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept to myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry.
In sorrow and pride I exiled myself to Kingswood. I shunned fire for I feared the kingsmen would hunt me down, and so by the way of cold and hunger I came near to refusing life itself. I never thought to anger or please a god by it. — Sarah Micklem

He could guide anyone to the point of no return. He'd corral them with poetry, music, invoking the alcoholic gods that all died young. But we were so young, we didn't know we had anything we would miss. — Hannah Lillith Assadi

A humble god! You might as well have a toothless wolf! The gods are the gods, ruling thunder and commanding storms, they are the lords of night and day, of fire and ice, the givers of disaster and of triumph. To this day I do not understand why folk become Christians unless it's simply that the other gods enjoy a joke. I have often suspected that Loki, the trickster god, invented Christianity because it has his wicked stench all over it. I can imagine the gods sitting in Asgard one night, all of them bored and probably drunk, and Loki amuses them with a typical piece of his nonsense, "Let's invent a carpenter," he suggests, "and tell the fools that he was the son of the only god, that he died and came back to life, that he cured blindness with lumps of clay, and that he walked on water!" Who would believe that nonsense? But the trouble with Loki is that he always takes his jests too far. — Bernard Cornwell

The pseudoscience of astrology has no place in magick. Astrology has already died twice: once with the classical gods, and a second time after the Enlightenment. The complete failure of contemporary psychology to create anything other than a vocabulary of intellectual rubbish has encouraged astrology to resurface. — Peter J. Carroll

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. "I can't," she said. "Once I go in, there's no way out again. This is real. You're real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream."

The witch cocked her head. "Only a dream?" she said mockingly. "Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods' powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream." She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. "The merman Traho knows this. He's coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you. — Jennifer Donnelly

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race. — Stanley Kunitz

Hippocrates cured many illnesses - and then fell ill and
died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in
due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey,
Caesar - who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so
many thousand foot and horse in battle - they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire.
But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared
with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin,
Socrates by the human kind.
And?
You boarded, you set sail, you've made the passage. Time
to disembark. If it's for another life, well, there's nowhere
without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no
longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on
dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body - so
much inferior to that which serves it.
One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage. — Marcus Aurelius

Annabeth nodded. "That's right.Alexander conquered Egypt.After he died, his general Ptolemy took over. He wanted the Egyptians to accept him as their pharaoh, so he mashed the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods together and made up new ones."
"Sounds messy," Sadie said. "I prefer my gods unmashed. — Rick Riordan

The critics say that epics have died out with Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods; I'll not believe it. I could never deem as Payne Knight did, that Homer's heroes measured twelve feet high. They were but men: -his Helen's hair turned grey like any plain Miss Smith's who wears a front; And Hector's infant whimpered at a plume as yours last Friday at a turkey-cock. All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes: every age, heroic in proportions, double faced, looks backward and before, expects a morn and claims an epos. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My name is Matthew Swift. I'm a sorcerer, the only one in the city who survived Robert Bakker's purge. I was killed by my teacher's shadow and my body dissolved into telephone static and all they had left to bury was a bit of blood. Then we came back, and I am we and we are me, and we are the blue electric angels, creatures of the phones and the wires, the gods made from the surplus life you miserable excuse for mortals pour into all things electric. I am the Midnight Mayor, the protector of the city, the guardian of the night, the keeper of the gates, the watcher on the walls. We turned back the death of cities, we were there when Lady Neon died, we drove the creature called Blackout into the shadows at the end of the alleys, we are light, we are life, we are fire and, would you believe it, the word that best describes our condition right now is cranky.
Would you like to see what happens when you make us mad? — Kate Griffin

O gods, rob not the earth of the dim hush that hangs round all Your temples, bereave not all the world of old romance, take not the glamour from the moonlight nor tear the wonder out of the white mists in every land; for, O ye gods of the childhood of the world, when You have left the earth You shall have taken the mystery from the sea and all its glory from antiquity, and You shall have wrenched our hope from the dim future. There shall be no strange cities at night time half understood, nor songs in the twilight, and the whole of the wonder shall have died with last year's flowers in little gardens or hill-slopes leaning south; for with the gods must go the enchantment of the plains and all the magic of dark woods, and something shall be lacking from the quiet of early dawn. — Lord Dunsany

They were infinite. They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity. The king standing before them gaped as the shield of flame died out to reveal Aelin and Dorian, hand in hand, glowing like newborn gods as their magic entwined. — Sarah J. Maas

Obviously the raven with the unquenchable itch was at it again, playing tricks on the world and its creatures. Once by air, he thought, and now by water. — Mordecai Richler

When Johnny Cash died, ... I picked up my guitar and got the idea that Bob Dylan was the last man standing, the last of the real gods. It was for Dylan, Cash, Lennon, Elvis that's what I was thinking. — Jon Bon Jovi

He was curiously calm. Men were supposed to go mad with grief when their children died, he knew. They were supposed to tear their hair out by the roots, to curse the gods and swear red vengeance. So why was it that he felt so little? The boy lived and died believing Robert Baratheon his sire. Jaime had seen him born, that was true, though more for Cersei than the child. But he had never held him. "How would it look?" his sister warned him when the women finally left them. "Bad enough Joff looks like you without you mooning over him." Jaime yielded with hardly a fight. The boy had been a squalling pink thing who demanded too much of Cersei's time, Cersei's love, and Cersei's breasts. Robert was welcome to him. And now he's dead. — George R R Martin

She tried to twist from his grip, but he held firm. Gods, she wanted to throw him across the cave - and with the same strength as when she'd pinned him earlier.
"What in the hell were you thinking to enter a competition like the Hie?" He gave her shoulders a jostle. "You knew what you were getting into, and you still signed up. You could have died!" he roared, shaking her hard.
She raised her hands to shove against his chest; he flew across the cavern, as though tossed against the far wall.
When he landed, he looked as dumbfounded as she felt. MacRieve was like a lightning rod for her powers. Whenever she wanted to use them against him, they worked perfectly.
As he made it back to his feet, an expression of such pure menace twisted his face that she thought he could kill her.
Fitting - since she was about to kill him. — Kresley Cole

A geas was a contract with the goddess of Fate. Sometimes one was born indentured, other times it was bestowed upon one as a curse. Because if one did not fulfill the terms of one's geas, one died. It was old magic, the magic of the gods, spoken in the tongues of those who controlled the dragons - and it was supposed to be extinct. — Nenia Campbell

There is no number so unlucky as thirteen. Once, in Valhalla, there was a feast for twelve gods, but Loki, the trickster god, went uninvited and he played his evil games, persuading Hod the Blind to throw a sprig of mistletoe at his brother, Baldur. Baldur was the favorite god, the good one, but he could be killed by mistletoe and so his blind brother threw the sprig and Baldur died and Loki laughed, and ever since we have known that thirteen is the evil number. Thirteen birds in the sky are an omen of disaster, thirteen pebbles in a cooking pot will poison any food placed in the pot, while thirteen at a meal is an invitation to death. Thirteen spears against a fortress could only mean defeat. Even the Christians know thirteen is unlucky. Father Beocca told me that was because there were thirteen men at Christ's last meal, and the thirteenth was Judas. — Bernard Cornwell

When a human doctor, after much bleeding and cupping, finds that a patient has died out of sheer desperation, he can always say, "Dear me, will of the gods, that will be thirty dollars please," and walk away a free man. This is because human beings are not, technically, worth anything. A good racehorse, on the other hand, may be worth twenty thousand dollars. A doctor who lets one hurry off too soon to that great paddock in the sky may well expect to hear, out of some dark alley, a voice saying something on the lines of "Mr. Chrysoprase is very upset," and find the brief remainder of his life full of incident. — Terry Pratchett

Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go. — Terry Pratchett

The first novel I wrote was a monster - clocking in at 180,000 words - but it died a death, a death it deserved. It was called 'The Gods First Make Mad.' It was a good title, but it was the only good thing about the book. I didn't let that put me off. — Wilbur Smith

Death is an ill; 'tis thus the Gods decide: / For had death been a boon, the Gods had died. — Sappho

So you could value your own life," replied the Titan. "Before that you were under the gods' thumbs, doing their bidding without caring if you lived or died. When you could see that life was worth living by your fear of the unknown that was death, then you could really make things happen. — Jasper Fforde

Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her weeping watered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had loved were buried. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would make when she died. — George R R Martin

Too bad that miserable tribe died with their secrets." Tossing the crystal
across the table, she announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, the kingdom of the gods is within our grasp. — Feather Stone

The contradictions were apparent to Makhaya, and perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. It seemed to Makhaya far preferable for Africa if it did without Christianity and Christian double-talk, fat priests, golden images, and looked around at all the thin naked old men who sat under trees weaving baskets with shaking hands. People could do without religions and Gods who died for the sins of the world and thereby left men without any feeling of self-responsibility for the crimes they committed. This seemed to Makhaya the greatest irony of Christianity. It meant that a white man could forever go on slaughtering black men simply because Jesus Christ would save him from his sins. Africa could do without a religion like that. 135 — Bessie Head

Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious powers behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat's back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge. — J.M. Coetzee

You came back," He said, as if that were an answer.
They joined hands.
So the world ended.
And the next one began.
They were infinite.
They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity.
The king standing before them gaped as the shield of flame died out to reveal Aelin and Dorian, hand in hand, glowing like newborn gods as their magic entwined.
"YOUR MINE," the man raged. He became darkness; folded himself into the powers he carried, as if he were nothing but malice on a dark wind.
He struck them, swallowed them.
But they held tighter to each other, past and present and future; flickering between an ancient hall in a mountain castle perched above Orynth, a bridge suspended between glass towers, and another place, perfect and strange, where they had been crafted from stardust and light.
A wall of night knocked them back. But they could not be contained.
The darkness paused for a breath.
They erupted. — Sarah J. Maas

Later that day, shortly before the sun sank in the wintry sky, despite the best efforts of the medics, Arra Sails closed her eyes, made peace with the gods of the vampires, breathed her last ... and died. — Darren Shan

At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear ...
... 'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. — Jorge Luis Borges

Serve God and live; serve these other gods and died. — Billy Graham

I - I mean," Kate stumbled on, "that with us there is a time past and time present, and time future, and with your gods perhaps there is time forever; but God in Himself has the whole of it, all times at once. It would be true to say that He came into our world and died here, in a time and a place; but it would also be true to say that in His eternity it is always That Place and That Time - here - and at this moment - and the power He had then, He can give to us now, as much as He did to those who saw and touched Him when He was alive on the earth. — Elizabeth Marie Pope

He started to list the coin vanishes he had mastered, which reminded him of the coin he had tossed into Laura's grave, and then, in his head, Audrey was telling him that Laura had died with Robbie's cock in her mouth, and once again he felt a small hurt in his heart. — Neil Gaiman

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died.
They are only sleeping at the bottom of your mind,
waiting for our call. We have need for them.
They represent the wisdom of our race. — Stanley Kunitz

Governments had risen and fallen; men and women had worked, had starved, had made speeches, had fought, had been tortured, had died. Hope had come and gone, a fugitive in the scented bosom of illusion. Men had learned to sniff the heady dreamstuff of the soul and wait impassively while the lathes turned the guns for their destruction. And through those years, Dimitrios had lived and breathed and come to terms with his strange gods. — Eric Ambler

Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right? When he died he woke up in a circle — Terry Pratchett

Blest as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee, all the while,
Softly speaks and sweetly smile.
'Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For, while I gazed, in transport tossed,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost;
My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung;
In dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
My blood with gentle horrors thrilled:
My feeble pulse forgot to play;
I fainted, sunk, and died away. — Sappho

And Eoferwic, I thought, was where my story had all begun. Where my father had died. Where I had become the Lord of Bebbanburg. Where I had met Ragnar and learned of the ancient gods. — Bernard Cornwell

Yes, she now believed that when her body died, her soul would go on. Gods she did not worship, and faith she had none, but love she had and forever. Love alone had awakened her sleeping soul and had made it deathless.
She knew she was immortal. — Pearl S. Buck

Vimes died. The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, and the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished and gurgled into the sinktrap of oblivion. And gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold! There was a new heaven - or possibly not. And Disc and Io and and possibly verily life crawled out of the sea - or possibly didn't because it had been made by the gods, and lizards turned to less scaly lizards - or possibly did not. And lizards turned into birds and bugs turned into butterflies and a species of apple turned into banana and a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realised life was better when you didn't have to spend your time hanging onto something. And in only a few billion years evolved trousers and ornamental stripey hats. Lastly the game of Crocket. And there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast. — Terry Pratchett

It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator.
The people down here just ate that up! — Kurt Vonnegut

THAT Perseus always won. That's why my momhad named me after him, even if he was son of Zeus ann I was son of Posidon. The original Perseus was one of the only heros in the greek myths who got a happy ending. The others died-betrayed, mauled, mutilated, poisoned, or cursed by the gods. My mom hoped i would inherit Perseus's luck. Judging by how my life was going so far, i wasn't too optimistic. — Rick Riordan

Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. — Henry Miller

And I think a long time ago there were big stories. Stories so big you could live your whole life in them. The Powerful Hands of the Gods and Fate. The Journey to Enlightenment. The March of Socialism. But they all died or the world grew up or grew senile or forgot them, so now we're making up our own stories. Little stories. But we've each got one. — Mark Ravenhill