Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Stephen Fry

Quote by Stephen Fry

“The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors -- earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilisation. So long as dragons, giants, centaurs and mutant beasts infested the air, earth and seas we could never spread out with confidence and transform the wild world into a place of safety for humanity. In time, even the benevolent minor deities would find themselves elbowed out by the burgeoning and newly confident human race. The nymphs, dryads, fauns, satyrs and sprites of the mountains, streams, meadows and oceans could not compete with our need and greed for land to quarry, farm and build upon. The rise of a spirit of rational enquiry and scientific understanding pushed the immortals further from us. The world was being reshaped as a home fit for mortal beings only. Today, of course, some of the rarer and more vulnerable mortal creatures that have shared the world with us are undergoing the same threats to their natural territories that cuased the end of the nymphs and woodland spirits. Habitat loss and species extinction have all happened before. The days of the gods themselves were numbered too. Prometheus's gift of fire, as Zeus had feared, would one day allow us to do even without the Olympians.”

Quote by Stephen Fry

Book:Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures
Create image

Work

Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is a British comedian, writer, actor, and broadcaster, known for his unique sense of humor and intelligence. He is one of the iconic figures in the British comedy scene. Born on August 24, 1957, Fry has been active in television and radio since the 1980s, gaining widespread popularity for his roles in comedy shows like 'Blackadder' and 'Jeeves and Wooster'. He has also appeared in numerous television series, films, and stage plays. more

You May Also Like

“Aside from the encounter with the Sphinx, there is little in Oedipus to connect him to the common run of Greek heroic figures. He strikes us today as a modern tragic hero and political animal; it is hard to picture him shaking hands with Heracles or joining the crew of the Argo. many scholars and thinkers, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, have seen in Oedipus a character who works out on stage the tension in Athenians (and all of us) between the reasoning, mathematically literate citizen and the transgressive blood criminal; between the thinking and the instinctual being; between the superego and the id; between the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses that contend within us. Oedipus is a detective who employs all the fields of enquiry of which the Athenians were so proud -- logic, numbers, rhetoric, order and discovery -- only to reveal a truth that is disordered, shameful, transgressive and bestial.”

TragedyMythologyHeroesGreek MythologyGreek Tragedy
Book:Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures
Create image

“In all the tales of adventure Clara had ever heard, it was never young girls, who were daring. It was always boys running off to rescue a friend or fetch much-needed medicine or stumble into good fortune. Clara knew girls would be daring if given half the chance. And she intended to take that chance, right from under the pale nose of Mr. Earwood.”

InspirationalAdventureBraveryFeministHeroesHeroines
Book:All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages
Create image

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. The fifteen-year-old boy who landed on his head while wrestling with his brother, leaving him paralyzed and barely able to swallow or speak. Travis Roy, paralyzed in the first eleven seconds of a hockey game in his freshman year at college. Harry Steifel, paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident at seventeen, completing his education and working on Wall Street at age thirty-two, but having missed so much of what life has to offer. These are the real heroes, and so are the many families and friends who have stood by them.”

HeroesParalyzedQuadriplegic
Book:Still Me
Create image

“In some real life situations there is something of the Fairy Tale. Sometimes, we forget, that magic is there for the making, and the makers are ourselves. Sometimes, it is our enemies who spur us on. For a challenge is nothing without striving. We admire a hero who earns good fortune, who strives to be a better person, who acts in the interests of others against dark forces that would bring them down. In Fairy Tales, the ultimate winners are good and true.”

FantasyMagicBooksReal LifeYoung Adult FictionHeroesFairy TalesChildrens Books
Author:Suzy Davies
Create image

“He had finished his quest, and it had cost him everything and everyone he'd done it for. The equation balanced perfectly: all canceled out. And without his crown, or his throne, or Fillory, or even his friends, he had no idea who he was. But something had changed inside him too. He didn't understand it yet, but he felt it. Somehow, even though he'd lost everything, he felt more like a king now than he ever did when he was one. Not like a toy king. He felt real.”

HeroesQuestsThe Magicians
Book:The Magician King
Create image