419 Quotes About Myth

However paradoxical it may seem, myth hides nothing: its function is to distort, not to make disappear.

Myth does not deny thing, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but of a statement of fact.

I'm willing to make an exception for you, seeing as I have a soft spot for mythmaking.

…either the intention of the myth is too obscure to be efficacious, or it is too clear to be believed. In either case, where is the ambiguity? This is but a false dilemma. Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. […] driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it. We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature.

A conjuring trick has taken place; it has turned reality inside out, it has emptied it of history and has filled it with nature, it has removed from things their human meaning so as to make them signify a human insignificance. The function of myth is to empty reality: it is, literally , a ceaseless flowing out, a haemorrhage, or perhaps an evaporation, in short a perceptible absence

Myth doesn’t mean something untrue, but a concentration of truth.

It is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue.

He who tells the people false revolutionary myths, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.

She closed her heartAs tight as Noah's arkSo nothing could get in or outI forgot where we beginSo she let it all endAnd left our love alone in the dark