Hannah > Hannah's Quotes

“I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia

“Icarus should have waited for nightfall,
the moon would have never let him go.”
― Nina Mouawad

“Apollo, sacred guard of earth's true core, Whence first came frenzied, wild prophetic word...”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Psyche did not think the feeling running through her could exist, it was too powerful, too profound and pierced her soul in a way that was a beautiful agony.”
― Jasmine Dubroff

“You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone."
— Kate Daniels”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes

“In Springtime, O Dionysos,
To thy holy temple come,
To Elis with thy Graces,
Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,
Noble Bull, Noble Bull”
― Plutarch

“I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation he was to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Long ago, darkness reigned over the night. People were afraid and remained inside their shelters from sundown until sunrise. The goddess Selene saw their fear and gave light to their nocturnal world by driving her moon chariot across the starry sky. She followed her brother Helios, who rode the sun and caught his shining rays on her magnificent silver chariot, then cast them down to earth as moonbeams. She felt pride in the way the earthlings were comforted by her light.
But one night when she had abandoned her chariot to walk upon the earth, she noticed that in times of trouble many people lost all hope. Their despair bewildered her. After considering their plight, she knew how she could make her moon the greatest gift from the gods.
From then on she drove around the earth and each night caught her brother's rays from a different angle. This way the face of the moon was everchanging. People watched the moon decrease in light every night, until it could no longer be seen from the earth. Then after three nights of darkness, a crescent sliver returned and the moon increased in light until it was fully illuminated as before. Selene did this to remind people that their darkest times can lead them to their brightest.
The ancients understood Selene's gift in the lunar phases. Each night when they gazed at the moon, they knew Selene was telling them to never give up hope.”
― Lynne Ewing, The Secret Scroll

“In ancient times when Pandora's box was opened-"
"Pandora?" Kendra interrupted. "Are you talking about the myth?"
Catty nodded solemnly. "It isn't a myth," she stated firmly and continued, "The last thing to leave the box was hope. Only Selene, the goddess of the moon, saw the creature that had been sent by the Atrox to devour hope. Selene took pity on the people of earth and gave her Daughters, like guardian angels, to perpetuate hope. I'm one of those Daughters. A goddess.”
― Lynne Ewing, The Secret Scroll

“Little by little I began to listen better: to the sap moving in the plants, to the blood in my veins. I learned to understand my own intention, to prune and to add, to feel where the power gathered and speak the right words to draw it to its height. That was the moment I lived for, when it all came clear at last and the spell could sing with its pure note, for me and me alone.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is funny,’ she said, ‘That even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in your father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet the great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.’ She was leaning forward, her golden hair loose, embroidering the sheets around her. ‘Let me tell you the truth about Helios and all the rest. They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The gods may have spoken, but Nature only bends to a goddess.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Even after a lifetime of being near oracles, I found their predictions annoyingly vague.”
― Tammie Painter, Domna, Part One: The Sun God's Daughter

“Then, like ravening wolves in a black mist, when the belly's lawless rage has driven them blindly forth, and their whelps at home await them with thirsty jaws, through swords, through foes we pass to certain death, and hold our way to the city's heart; black night hovers around with sheltering shade.”
― Virgil, The Aeneid

“...we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of 'hearth and home'. The word 'hearth' shares its ancestry with 'heart', just as the modern Greek for 'hearth' is kardia, which also means 'heart'. In Ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in economics and ecology. The Latin for hearth is focus - with speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of the words for fireplace we have spun "cardiologist', 'deep focus' and 'eco-warrior'. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

“I will not sentence myself to such a living death.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Diana was the goddess of the hunt and of all newborn creatures. Women prayed to her for happiness in marriage and childbirth, but her strength was so great that even the warlike Amazons worshipped her.
No man was worthy of her love, until powerful Orion won her affection. She was about to marry him, but her twin brother, Apollo, was angered that she had fallen in love. One day, Apollo saw Orion in the sea with only his head above the water. Apollo tricked Diana by challenging her to hit the mark bobbing in the distant sea. Diana shot her arrow with deadly aim. Later, the waves rolled dead Orion to shore.
Lamenting her fatal blunder, Diana placed Orion in the starry sky. Every night, she would lift her torch in the dark to see her beloved. Her light gave comfort to all, and soon she became known as a goddess of the moon.
It was whispered that if a girl-childwas born in the wilderness, delivered by the great goddess Diana, she would be known for her fierce protection of the innocent.”
― Lynne Ewing, Night Shade

“He liked such sharpness, for there was nothing in him that had any blood you might spill.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I stepped into those woods and my life began.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“However gold he shines, do not forget his fire.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure not to dishonor me."

"I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I remembered what Odysseus had said about her once. That she never went astray, never made an error. I had been jealous then. Now I thought: what a burden. What an ugly weight upon your back.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe