#gods

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama. ↗

— Lillian Hellman

#believe #did #end #gods #greeks

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

— Stanley Kunitz

#call #died #gods #heroes #mind

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

#fantasy #god #gods #likeness #reality

THE GODS was my first professional band and I learned a lot during that time. It was very cool playing with so many great musicians as it helped me to learn. ↗

— Ken Hensley

#cool #during #first #gods #great

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#himself #judge #knowledge #laughter #set

At Bealltainn, or May Day, every effort was made to scare away the fairies, who were particularly dreaded at this season. In the West Highlands charms were used to avert their influence. In the Isle of Man the gorse was set alight to keep them at a distance. In some parts of Ireland the house was sprinkled with holy water to ward off fairy influence. These are only a mere handful out of the large number of references available, but they seem to me to reveal an effort to avoid the attentions of discredited deities on occasions of festival once sacred to them. The gods duly return at the appointed season, but instead of being received with adoration, they are rebuffed by the descendants of their former worshippers, who have embraced a faith which regards them as demons. In like manner the fairies in Ireland were chased away from the midsummer bonfires by casting fire at them. At the first approach of summer, the fairy folk of Scotland were wont to hold a "Rade," or ceremonial ride on horseback, when they were liable to tread down the growing grain. ↗

— Lewis Spence

#demons #faires #fairy #gods #halloween

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#gods #homemade #ours #power #pull

If a faithful account was rendered of Man’s ideas upon Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word “gods” has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods  …   When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon  …   does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe? ↗

— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

#divinity #gods #ignorance #knowledge #materialism

No one else holds or has held the place in the heart of the world which Jesus holds. Other gods have been as devoutly worshipped; no other man has been so devoutly loved. ↗

— John Knox

#devoutly #else #gods #heart #held

We're entertainers, while people want us to be gods. ↗

— Donnie Wahlberg

#gods #people #us #want #while