613 Quotes by Stephen Fry

This species, the mute swan, became holy to Apollo. In remembrance of the death of the beloved Phaeton the bird is silent all its life until the very moment of its death, when it sings with terrible melancholy its strange and lovely goodbye, its swan song. In honour of Cygnus the young of all swans are called ‘cygnets’.

After the shooting of John Lennon and the early death of so many great stars and the utter naked venal mercantile marketing of pop music and rock music, I don’t think anyone really believes that music is anything more than another commodity.

If you have been, I’m glad you’ve stopped.

I hate it when people say swearing isn’t necessary. Things not being necessary is what makes life interesting, the little extras in life.

Of course the Greeks were not the only people to weave a tapestry of legends and lore out of the puzzling fabric of existence.

You’ll often hear the phrase “science doesn’t know everything.” Well, of course it doesn’t know everything. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean that it knows nothing.

His heart lifted to a state approaching something like happiness, however, when he heard, unexpectedly, the sound of Rhea’s low sweet voice humming gently to herself as she came up the slope towards the mountaintop. Loveliest sister and dearest wife! It was quite natural that she had been a little upset by his consumption of their six children, but she surely understood that he had had no choice. She was a Titan, she knew about duty and destiny.

Ixion had committed one of the first blood murders; unless he was cleansed of his transgression, the Furies would pursue him until he went mad. The princes, lords and neighbouring landowners of Thessaly had cause to dislike Ixion and none offered to perform the catharsis, the ritual process of purification that would redeem him.

Little girls grow up to be women, little boys grow up to be little boys.