Mircea Quotes & Sayings

A religious symbol conveys its message even if it is no longer consciously understood in every part. For a symbol speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence. — Mircea Eliade

I've been in L.A., but I wasn't acting. I didn't know that I wanted to act, so I was in L.A. but working at a restaurant seven days a week and trying to figure out what I wanted to do and all that kind of stuff. — Mircea Monroe

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing - even fugitively - in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. — Mircea Eliade

Louis-Cesare's anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver tinged to as solid as two antique coins.
I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in. — Karen Chance

To have solely one thought, but it to be capable to destroy the universe. — Mircea Eliade

Mess with my weed again and I'll be informing Daddy that there was an early casualty on the mission. I saw him wince at my designation for Mircea and grinned. — Karen Chance

Pritkin and Mircea mixed like oil and water, only not so well. — Karen Chance

I auditioned for 'Jake in Progress,' and I was nervous because I had a big crush on John Stamos. I was totally thrown off and couldn't remember my lines. — Mircea Monroe

It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected. — Mircea Eliade

Hesse's Journey to the East (1951) in the fifties anticipated the occult revival of the late sixties. But who will interpret for us the amazing success of Rosemary's Baby and 2001? I am merely asking the question. — Mircea Eliade

Mircea leaned over to refill my wineglass, and a section of his bare chest showed under the robe, along with a hint of dusky nipple. It's a good thing I'm too stuffed to move, I thought hazily. I would so have jumped that. — Karen Chance

Man makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacrilizes himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will become himself only when he is totally demysticized. He will not be truly free until he has killed the last god. — Mircea Eliade

I wanted to study them all; obviously, not as a specialist, but still rigorously, working directly from texts, because I have a horror of improvisation and hearsay learning. — Mircea Eliade

Harner has impeccable credentials, both as an academic and as a practicing shaman. Without doubt (since the recent death of Mircea Eliade) the world's leading authority on shamanism. — Nevill Drury

It would be frightening to think that in all the cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one's destiny lacks meaning. — Mircea Eliade

This is getting surreal," Marlowe murmured. "Even for this place."
"Cassie is here-mentally," Mircea told him.
"I gathered that."
"She seems to find it difficult to understand why I do not wish to have her in my head, unannounced, any time she pleases
"
Marlowe gave a bark of a laugh. "Oh this should be fun. — Karen Chance

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. — Mircea Eliade

Romanians have a particular love for poetry and have a beautiful, vivid language. The poets they love are not versifiers like Vadim Tudor, but genuinely complex mystical souls like Mircea Cartarescu. — Andrei Codrescu

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology , sociology , economics , linguistics , art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it the element of the sacred . — Mircea Eliade

The primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman is not only a sick man, he is above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself. — Mircea Eliade

It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection. — Mircea Eliade

The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality. — Mircea Eliade

Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality - the source of all possible existence. — Mircea Eliade

The great cosmic illusion is a hierophany ... One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity. — Mircea Eliade

The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics. — Mircea Eliade

Damn it, the man needed a keeper. Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn't going to happen, so just shut up.
Sometimes I didn't think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway. "It's like someone invented you just to mess with me," I said resentfully. "Quoi?" I sighed. — Karen Chance

I grew up near the University of Michigan, so we'd sneak into college parties. That's where my acting started - lying about the professors I supposedly had and what I was studying. — Mircea Monroe

I narrowed my eyes at it. Ming-de's little gift, I assumed. "You look better in color," I snapped.
He sent me a sultry look over his shoulder. "Really? Most women think I look better in nothing at all. — Karen Chance

When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center. — Mircea Eliade

Barack Obama is crazy sexy. — Mircea Monroe

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time. — Mircea Eliade

The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the founding of the world: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence. — Mircea Eliade

To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior. — Mircea Eliade

My tried-and-true philosophy of keeping people at a distance was taking a beating lately. It wasn't working so well with Mircea, and Pritkin had somehow bulldozed past every defense I had before I'd even noticed. I still wasn't sure how he'd done it.
He wasn't that good-looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird. In between crazy stunts and, okay, saving my life, he was just really annoying. When we'd started working together, I'd assumed it would be a question of putting up with Pritkin; then suddenly the stupid hair was making me smile, and the sporadic heroics were making my heart jump and the constant bitching had me wanting to kiss him quiet. And now I cared more than was good for me. — Karen Chance

He smiled at that, and then his gaze shifted to a spot over my shoulder and it faded. 'These doubts wouldn't have anything to do with the company you're keeping of late, would they?'
I didn't get a chance to answer before the shop door was thrown open and a furious war mage stomped in. Pritkin spotted me and his eyes narrowed.
'You shaved my legs?!'
Mircea looked at me and folded his arms across his chest. I looked from one unhappy face to the other and suddenly remembered that I had somewhere else to be. — Karen Chance

But you were Mine. My child. And I would not give you up. — Karen Chance

The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the ganz andere or 'wholly other. — Mircea Eliade

If I ideally can, I'd do a comedy, and then I would do something where I'm a mental patient, and then I'd go back and do a comedy so I can continue to express myself in different ways. — Mircea Monroe

Light does not come from light, but from darkness. — Mircea Eliade

My religion: Very seldom do I feel a need for the presence of God. I don't pray and I don't know how to pray. When I enter a church, I try to pray, but I can't tell if I succeed or not. But often I have religious "attacks": the desire for isolation, for contemplation far from other people. Despair. The desire (and the hope) for asceticism. — Mircea Eliade

And since a more convincing argument could not be found - aside from a fatal accident or suicide - this way was chosen: a process of galloping senescence. — Mircea Eliade

I'm beginning to sense a theme," Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. "I believe there is only one thing to say at this point."
What's that?"
Yee haw," he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf. — Karen Chance

I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea's younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master
the highest and rarest vampire rank.
A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea's bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn't exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I'd even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.
Sometimes, I could be really stupid. — Karen Chance

The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning. — Mircea Eliade

My very first job was something called 'Nobody's Watching,' that Bill Lawrence who created 'Scrubs,' it was his pilot. It was my very first TV job, and it was a sitcom. Ever since that experience, I've been so itching to get back to that kind of environment and just to be involved with comedy. — Mircea Monroe

Through reading, the modern man succeeds in obtaining an "escape from time" comparable to the "emegence from time" effected by myths. ( ... ) Reading projects him out if his personal duration and incorporates him into other rythms, makes him live in another "history". — Mircea Eliade

Psychoanalysis justifies its importance by asserting that it forces you to look to and accept reality. But what sort of reality? A reality conditioned by the materialistic and scientific ideology of psychoanalysis, that is, a historical product ... — Mircea Eliade

To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for the Absolute was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood. — Mircea Eliade

I looked up to see the sailing ship above me, the prow dipped low and Mircea hanging off the end of the wooden figurehead. His fist was knotted in my waistband, which explained why I couldn't breathe. Considering the alternative, I really didn't mind so much.
Even so, I was surprised his reflexes had been good enough to catch me. He looked kind of shocked himself. For a second, the reserved demeanor cracked open on something wild and fierce and compelling. Then he dragged me up, put a hand on either side of my face and kissed me full on the lips. From somewhere above, I heard Pritkin swear. — Karen Chance

This isn't sex."
I blinked. "Oh. Then what is it?"
"An emergency!"
I started to argue and then thought twice about it. Considering what Mircea would do to Pritkin if he ever found out about this ... Yeah. Emergency sounded good. — Karen Chance

You're blaming me for this?"
"No. I am merely pointing out that it is a security risk
"
"How? I thought we were on the same side."
"We are on the same side
"
"Then how it is a risk for me to be in your head?"
"It's a privacy issue
"
"A minute ago it was a security issue."
"It is possible for it to be both!" He snapped.
I blinked.
"I'm starting to wish I had popcorn," Marlowe murmured.
"You can leave," Mircea informed him.
A dark eyebrow raised. "This is my office. You already threw me out of yours. — Karen Chance

The joy of life is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. — Mircea Eliade

When I did that '3 Days of Normal' one, we had no budget, and we were all staying in a house in New Hampshire. There's no trailers, and it's just a family environment. There's not much of a crew; you just do what you need to do. — Mircea Monroe

You know, dulceata, there are times when I truly believe you are the most frightening person I know.
Thank you? — Karen Chance

And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is. — Mircea Eliade

I had my first apartment when I was 16. I got good grades, so my friends would be able to come over to 'study.' We'd party, and they'd cheat off me. Everybody won! — Mircea Monroe

The most temptation I'd experienced had been with Tomas, the Senate's spy who had been feeding off me without permission, and Mircea, who was probably plotting some nefarious scheme. I have no taste in men. — Karen Chance

And then Mircea finally let me down, only to get his hands inside the coat and push me against the wall.
"I'm dirty," I protested.
He waggled his eyebrows. "Promise?"
"Mircea!" I laughed in spite of myself ... — Karen Chance

I was working at a restaurant in L.A. when a producer came in. He said I should audition for this movie 'Cellular.' I did, and I got the part. It actually makes me sick to tell that story because it's obnoxious. — Mircea Monroe

Then you must be willing to fight," Mircea responded. "Life is not a gift, Raphael; it's a challenge. Rise to it! — Karen Chance

Fanatics." Mircea sounded disgusted. "She called them utopians." "Same thing under a different name." "She said they could be dangerous - " "They always are. Anyone who can only see their point of view is. Once a group decides that their way is the only way, it is an easy progression to vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them. And once someone has been demonized, has been characterized as opposing the good, killing him becomes a virtue. — Karen Chance

One makes whatever revolution one can, each in their own way. — Mircea Andreescu

Mircea must have heard us come in, but he continued what he was doing.
He stood with his back to us, the candlelight on his bare skin causing his muscles to fall into sharp relief. He'd washed the river gunk out of his hair and now he threw it back, the water droplets shimmering in the light. The scene looked for all the world like a really good romance novel cover. — Karen Chance

As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth. — Mircea Eliade

Whether religion is man-made is a question for philosophers or theologians. But the forms are man-made. They are a human response to something. As a historian of religions, I am interested in those expressions. — Mircea Eliade

When one approaches an exotic spirituality, one understands principally what one is predestined to understand by one's own vocation, by one's own cultural orientation and that of the historical moment to which one belongs. — Mircea Eliade

I don't want to be mediocre, this is the fear of my soul and my body. — Mircea Eliade

Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being. — Mircea Eliade

Every religion implies that it treats the problem of being and nonbeing, life and death. Their languages are different, but they speak about the same things. — Mircea Eliade

If we pay no attention to it, time does not exist. — Mircea Eliade