Legend Quotes
More Legend Quotes
That is how I would have acted before my accident, but now my personal history had become unimportant. It had stopped being history and was once more becoming a legend, a search, an adventure, a journey into and away from myself. I was once more in a time which the things around me were changing and that is how I wanted it to be for the rest of my days.
paulo coelho— p. 272 (The Zahir (2005))
The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. … The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric.
lucio russo— "The Erasure of Ancient Science" in The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)
legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.
tim berners-lee— "The Guardian profile : Tim Berners-Lee"(12 August 2005)
The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.
Bernard Malamud— 1979 Dubin's Lives.
As Michael read the Gaelic scroll It seemed the story of the soul; And those who wrought, lest there should fail From earth the legend of the Gael, Seemed warriors of Eternal Mind Still holding in a world gone blind, From which belief and hope had gone, The lovely magic of its dawn.
— 1922 The Interpreters,'Michael'.
It's sad that these people think he's such a wonderful subject, that he's a living legend when, in fact, there is this poor sad man who can't deal with life or himself. He's got uncontrollable things in him that he can't deal with and people think it's a marvellous, wonderful, romantic thing. It's just a sad, sad thing, a very nice and talented person who's just disintegrated.
syd barrett— David Gilmour, Musician Magazine (December 1982)
I suspect that the playwright Edmond Rostand accurately portrays his ability as a swordsman; Cyrano was something of a legend in his own time.
cyrano de bergerac— Donald Webb in "The Time Traveler from The Other World" (2003).
There is no doubt about Martin Luther's marriage, but the rumour about his wife's early confinement is false; she is said however to be pregnant now. If there is truth in the popular legend, that Antichrist will be born from a monk and a nun (which is the story these people keep putting about), how many thousands of Antichrists the world must have already!
— Responding to rumours prompted by the marriage of Martin Luther, in a letter to François Dubois (13 March 1526), as translated in The Correspondence of Erasmus : Letters 1658 to 1801, January 1526-March 1527 (1974) edited by Charles Garfield Nauert and Alexander Dalzell, p. 79
— Paraphrased variant: They say that the Antichrist will be born of a monk and a nun. If so, there must already be thousands of Antichrists.
You can call it a miracle or a legend or whatever you want to. I just know that on that day, Brett Favre was larger than life.
brett favre— Alabama coach Gene Stallings
— Traina, Jimmy (5 October 2002). Brett Favre Timeline. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.
Let him leave his home town and try to invade the United States and beat Bernard Hopkins, a great champion, a legend.
bernard hopkins— On Joe Calzaghe, as quoted in "Hopkins turns up heat on Calzaghe"at BBC News (14 November 2007)
The legend of the parting of the Red Sea probably refers to tidal changes in the Sea of Reeds related to the Thera eruption.
julian jaynes— Book II, Chapter 3, p. 213 ( See also: The Exodus and Minoan eruption)
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused — hence all the old tales of elfin Kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. ... That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.
charles de lint— Goninan in Part One: The Hidden People, "Border Spirit" p. 337
He produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature.
james macpherson— The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910-11) vol. 17, p. 268.
On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Assuredly they will not be disturbed either by the lays of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense; the subjects they treat of being out of the reach of evidence, and time having robbed most of them of historical value by enthroning them in the region of legend.
Thucydides— Book I, 21-[1]
I would like to show the German people a film with the title 'Germany at the end of the war.' Then perhaps people would be alarmed and would realize where we are heading. People would agree with me that the superior warlord (Hitler) must disappear. But since we cannot show this movie people will create the legend of the 'stab in the back' whenever we will act against Hitler.
henning von tresckow— December 1941. Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow, ein Preusse gegen Hitler, p135-6
Take new values : Leave behind a legend to be followed by those who follow you. Be a yogi — don't be an ordinary person.
harbhajan singh yogi— Remark (9 January 1978), as quoted in Transitions to a Heart Centered World : Through the Kundalini Yoga and Meditations of Yogi Bhajan (1988) by Guru Rattana and Ann M. Maxwellm, p. 107
By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.
theodor adorno— p. 6 (Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy] (1963))
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.
max beerbohm— Laughter (1920)
Sarojini Naidu:;: Kingly was Deshbandhu Das in every impulse and gesture of his life, royal alike in the splendour of his bounty and the splendour of his renunciation. As the idol of the nation he served with unsurpassing devotion. To the generations of tomorrow, he will grow into a radiant figure of historic legend and romance, a vital portion of epic beauty and grandeur of their spiritual heritage.
chittaranjan das— Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tamed creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within – for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster.
suetonius— Gore Vidal On Our Own Now, (London, 1976), p. 72.
Sister Simplicitie! Sing, sing a song to me, Sing me to sleep! Some legend low and long, Slow as the summer song Of the dull Deep.
— Sidney Dobell, A Sleep Song.
The Portuguese from their old fort city in Mylapore built the legend of San Thome de Meliyapor and a strong Roman Catholic presence into the city.
— S. Muthiah, in p.47 (Diaspora of the Gods : Modern Hindu Temples in an Urban Middle-Class World)
In Pataliputra, India , which is now the city of Patna, legend also says that the Emerald Buddha was created in Patna (then Pataliputra) by Agrasena in 43 BCE...in Northern Thailand, lightning struck a pagoda in a temple in Chiang Rai, after which something became visible under the stucco . The Emerald Buddha was dug out and the people thought the figurine was made from emerald , hence its current name...The Buddha 's clothing are changed by the King of Thailand, to celebrate the changing of seasons .
— Ryan Fyfe , in The Emerald Buddha, ESL Teachers Board.
The name Shillong is derived from a peak of the same name. According to one legend the name came from a young handsome boy called ‘Shyllong’ who was born under mysterious conditions to a virgin mother .
— The Indian Backpacker, in Shillong : Scotland of the East, The Indian Backpacker.
...the treasure discovered in a temple in southern India. Nobody knew for certain what was hidden beneath the ancient Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple... But a lawyer named Ananda Padmanabhan had a hunch. According to legend , treasure was sealed in the temple vaults .
— Jake Halpern, in The Secret of The Temple:The discovery of treasure worth billions of dollars shakes southern India. April 30, 2012
Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tamed creatures, whose great moral task is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within – for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster.
— Gore Vidal On Our Own Now, (London, 1976), p. 72.
Chapel of Saint Sebastian, has crucifix first brought to Panaji in 1812 from Old Goa after the Inquisition was suppressed. It is considered an unusual piece since Christ ’s eyes are open – rather than shut as is customary - and legend has it that this was done to instill fear in the hearts of those being brought before the dreaded Inquisitors.
Amy Karafin— Anirban Mahapatra, in “South India”, p.195
Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition. The land that all men desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined.
— Mark Twain, Through Indian Eyes - Page 113.
It is Patrick the legend, of course, who is most engaging and comes to us as something of a happy Celtic party monster.
— Charles M. Madigan, in "Patrick,we Hardly Knew Ye" (14 March 1997)
