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Quote by A.S. Byatt

“But if you write a version of Ragnarok in the twenty-first century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.”

Quote by A.S. Byatt

Book:Ragnarok
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Ragnarok

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A.S. Byatt

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Book:A Time to Keep Silence
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“What do you know of the Knights?” he asked. Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.” Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.” “Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said. Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.”

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Book:Fiddler's Green
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“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult. To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.”

Mythology
Book:The Hero with a Thousand Faces
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“وشاع الزهو في أعطاف إيكاروس، فكان يرتفع قليلا، أو يهبط قليلا عن سمت أبيه؛ ثم تشجع وتشجع، وبهرته زرقة السماء وأديمها الصافي، فجازف وارتفع ارتفاعا شاهقا، ونسي وصية أبيه، فعلا وذهب في السماء صعدا، وكان يغريه أن يصغر العالم الأرضي في عينيه، فيعلو ويعلو وا أسفاه!! لقد دنت ساعة الانتقام لك يا بردكس! فلقد صهرت الشمس شمع الجناحين، وهوى إيكاروس إلى الأعماق! ولما دنا من والده صرخ صرخة هائلة دوت في إذن أبيه، فتلفت الشيخ ليرى ولده يغوص في اليم، يبتلعه مرة ويلفظه أخرى! فأسرع الوالد المسكين إلى البحر، وأنتشل ولده من الماء جثة هامدة! وكان هو بدوره قد أذاب الماء شمع جناحيه، فعالج الموج معالجة، وسبح بفلذة كبده إلى جزيرة قريبة، بلغها بعد جهد وعناء! وجلس يبكي ولده. . . ثم شق له قبرا صغيرا في رمل الشاطئ، وما كاد يسره فيه، حتى رأى قطاة حزينة تدوم في السماء، ثم تهبط قليلا قليلا، حتى تكون بمقربة من القبر، فتقف كاسفة مشجونة وتنظر إلى الجثة والدموع تنهمل من عينيها. . عبرة، فعبرة. . ويفرغ الشيخ من مواراة ولده في التراب! وينته! فيرى القطاة! فينشج نشيجا مؤلما، ويقول: (بردكس!! أتيت تبكي إيكاروس!! سامحني يا بردكس!) فتزقو القطاة كأنها تنتحب! ثم تدنو من القبر حتى تكون فوقه، فتذرف عبرتين غاليتين، وترف في الهواء حتى تغيب عن عيني ديدالوس!”

Mythology
Book:أساطير الحب والجمال عند اليونان - المجلد الأول
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