Epics Quotes

“I know, better than anyone else, that there are no heroes coming to save us. There are no good Epics. None of them protect us. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart

“Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is.”
― Philip Pullman

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Firefight

“I am the Wind that blows across the Sea
I am the Wave of the Ocean
I am the Murmur of the Billows
I am the Bull of the Seven Combats
I am the Vulture on the Rock
I am a Ray of the Sun
I am the Fairest of Flowers
I am a Wild Boar in Valour
I am a Salmon in the Pool
I am a Lake on the Plain
I am the Skill of the Craftsman
I am a Word of Science
I am the Spear-point that gives Battle
I am the god who creates in the head of man the Fire of Thought.
Who is it that Enlightens the Assembly upon the mountain, if not I?
Who tells the ages of the moon, if not I?
Who shows the place where the sun goes to rest, if not I?
Who calls the cattle from the House of Tethra?
On whom do the cattle of Tethra smile?
Who is the god that fashions enchantments - the enchantment of battle and the wind of change?
― Amergin”
― Amergin

“Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
― Obi-Wan Kenobi

“My life wasn’t just about one city, or one Epic, anymore. It was about a war. It was about finding a way to stop the Epics.
Permanently.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Firefight

“Whatever their DNA contribution to the region, the Brahmins did bring
with them from India three crucial gifts that proved irresistible right across
the region: Sanskrit, the art of writing and the stories of the great Indian
epics.
No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the
deeds of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. From the fifth
century, right on through to the dance and shadow puppetry of the present
day, these would remain a major feature in the art and culture of South-east
Asia.26 In time, even the landscape of South-east Asia began to be renamed
under the influence of the great epics and the stories of their respective
heroes, the Pandava brothers and Lord Rama.
The earliest inscription in Khmer territories dating from the fifth century
records that a ruler in what is now Laos took the Indic name Devanika and
the grandiose Sanskrit title Maharajadhiraja, ‘King of Kings’. This
happened during a ceremony when the King installed an image of Shiva
under the lingam-shaped mountain that towered over his capital of
Champasak. There he consecrated a tank which he named Kurukshetra,
after the plain to the north of Delhi where the great battle of the
Mahabharata was fought”
― William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

“Life and death, joy and sorrow, gain and loss; These dualities cannot be avoided. Learn to accept what you cannot change.”
― Ramayana (book 2)

“It is clear, therefore, that there is enough evidence of historical memory in India to render the line of investigation adopted here worth pursuing. It is true that Hindu India does not possess a sustained tradition of historiography of the kind we find in other ancient cultures such as Greece, Rome and China. Sometimes cultures exhibit such civilizational gaps. For instance, China has a long history, a history of warfare and chivalry as well, and of course a literary tradition right from Confucius onwards, but it did not produce an epic of the kind we find in Greece, Rome and India.
One reason behind this histographic gap in India could be that historical events in ancient India were recorded on stone rather than paper. This renders the facts narrated above particularly signficant, as they are cut in stone. India has more than 90,000 inscriptions, most of which are still unread.”
― Arvind Sharma, From Fire to Light: Rereading the Manusmriti

“Per ogni mito narrato, c'è un mito non narrato e innominato che gli accenna dall'ombra, affiorando per allusioni, schegge, coincidenze, senza che mai un autore osi raccontarlo di seguito come una singola storia.”
― Roberto Calasso, Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia