Mythic Thought Quotes & Sayings

Long a topic of interest for history and philosophy of science, the Copernican Revolution more recently has become a favorite symbol for popular science writers. This symbol is used in two main ways, both of which shade easily into the mythic. First, the Copernican Revolution is invoked to mark a point of grand transformation between anthropocentric and objective thinking. Second, many portrayals of the Copernican Revolution heroize its protagonist and ritualize his deed. The Copernican Revolution designates an alleged shift in worldview that took place in the past, but also a sort of personal microcosm of that event - a rite of passage that any mind aspiring to science must undergo. The term "myth" in some usages becomes a near-synonym for pre-Copernican thought - a definition that is maddeningly inadequate even though refreshingly concise. — Gregory Schrempp

Up before sunrise. Marjorie hated getting out of bed in the dark, but loved the payoff once she was dressed and rolling down the country roads in the first light, cruising and owning them almost alone. The countryside here used to be a lot more interesting, though. She remembered it in her girlhood - orchards, small ranches, farmhouses, each one of these houses a distinct personality... Money, she thought wryly, scanning the endless miles of grapevines, all identically wired and braced and drip-lined, mile after mile - money was such a powerful organizer.

As the dawn light gained strength, and bathed the endless vines in tarnished silver, it struck her that there was, after all, something scary about money, that it could run loose in the world like a mythic monster, gobbling up houses and trees, serving strictly its own monstrous appetite. ("The Growlimb") — Michael Shea

God is good. He is eager to forgive. He wants us to perfect ourselves and maintain control of ourselves. He does not want Satan and others to control our lives. We must learn that keeping our Heavenly Father's commandments represents the only path to total control of ourselves, the only way to find joy, truth, and fulfillment in this life and in eternity. — Spencer W. Kimball

Instead of focusing on isolated objects and events, we can expand our fixed perspective and allow the deeper process (often taking the form of a mythic narrative of some sort) that is animating events to reveal itself. Instead of superimposing our limiting ideas and beliefs onto the waking dream, we can allow life to show its dreamlike nature to us. — Paul Levy

I am the ship in which you sail,
little dancing bones — Maura Dooley

The first principle of success is desire - knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed. — Robert Collier

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. — Sigmund Freud

The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis of the spine. There was a heavy traffic to the spas and sulphur springs, where the purgative was valued as an inducement to the appetite. America was a great farting country. All this began to change when Taft moved into the White House. His accession to the one mythic office in the American imagination weighed everyone down. His great figure immediately expressed the apotheosis of that style of man. Thereafter fashion would go the other way and only poor people would be stout. — E.L. Doctorow

What I discovered during my studies in Poe's and other early Americans' texts was the intellectual source of racial Whiteness. Here, in these pages, was the very fossil record of how this odd and illogical sickness formed. Here was the twisted mythic underpinnings of modern racial thought that could never before be dismantled because we were standing on them. — Mat Johnson

Whoops,' said John. 'I tossed our ball into another universe.'
'You wanna go home?'
'Yeah, just let me get my ball. — David Wong

In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera's work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day. — Terrance Hayes

His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I wanted to show that the fables and mythic tales which the ancients have handed down to us and in which painters and sculptors never cease to find mindless pleasure are the hieroglyphics of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom. I sometimes thought I felt its breath, as though coming from behind a veil. — Hugo Von Hofmannsthal