Pagan Quotes

“The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking.

Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self.

These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,—the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“Was it possible I’d labeled him incorrectly? Shallow jocks
didn’t overcome adversity and accomplish the things Leif had. I’d labeled him, not even knowing him. Just because girls went gaga over him and
every boy wanted to be him didn’t make him a jerk. The only jerk in the room happened to be the judgmental, elitist female. Me.”
― Abbi Glines, Existence

“He stopped and looked back at me "I love you too Pagan. I'll miss you. In every life.”
― Abbi Glines

“You weren’t meant for the ice, you weren’t made for the pain.
The world that lives inside of me was not the world you 75
Existence
were meant to contain.
You were meant for castles and living in the sun. The cold running through me should have made you run.
Yet you stay. Holding onto me, yet you stay, reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you
stay. When I know it’s not right for you.
The ice fills my veins and I can’t feel the pain, yet you’re there like the heat that sends me screaming in fear.
I can’t feel the warmth I need to feel the ice. I want to hold it all in and numb it till I can’t feel the knife.
Your heat threatens to melt it all and I know I can’t bear the pain if the ice melts away.
So I push you away and I scream out your name and I know I can’t need you yet you give anyway and I run wishing you would run too.
Yet you stay. Holding onto me yet you stay reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay.
When I know it’s not right for you.
The blackness is my shield. I pull it closer still.
You’re the light that I hide from, the light that I hate.
You’re the light to this darkness and I can’t let you stay.
I need the dark around me like I need the ice in my veins.
The cold is my healer. The cold is my safe place. You aren’t welcome with your heat you don’t belong beside me.
I hate you yet I love, I don’t want you yet I need you.
The dark will always be my cloak and you are the threat to unveil my pain, so leave. Leave and erase the memories.
I need to face the life that’s meant for me. Don’t stay and ruin all my plans.
You can’t have my soul I’m not a man.
The empty vessel I dwell in is not meant to feel the heat you bring. I push you away and I push you away.
Yet you stay.”
― Abbi Glines, Existence

“Black magic, the magic of the primeval chaos, blots out or transmogrifies the true form of things. At the stroke of twelve the princess must flee the banquet or risk discovery in the rags of a kitchen wench; coach reverts to pumpkin. Instability lies at the heart of the world. With uncanny foresight folklore has long toyed symbolically with what the nineteenth century was to proclaim a reality - namely, that form is an illusion of the time dimension, that the magic flight of the pursued hero or heroine through frogskin and wolf coat has been, and will continue to be, the flight of all men.”
― Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower

“The trees were tinted exquisitely to an uncertain glory as the great red sinking sun flashed its rays on their crystal mantle. The vale of Aylesbury was drowsing beneath a slowly deepening shroud of mist. Above it the hills, their crests rounded and shaded by silver and rose coppices, seemed to have set in them great smoky eyes of flame where the last rays burned in them.

'It is like some dream world,' thought Mr. Cort. 'It is curious how, wherever the sun strikes, it seems to make an eye, and each one fixed on me; those hills, even those windows. But, judging from that mist, I shall have a slow journey home...

("Blind Man's Bluff")”
― H.R. Wakefield

“I stared up at the black chiffon and tried to imagine my eternity. It looked very bleak. Hopefully, insanity would claim me quickly.”
― Abbi Glines, Predestined

“But hippies always forget that old Gaea can be one heartless bitch. Spend a little time wandering lost in the woods as she attacks you and tries to reduce you to fertilizer.” She snorted. “You won’t be singing kumbayas very long.” She paused to make sure Janus would get the point. “In this world, Gaea’s the predator and we’re the prey.”
― Jenifer Mohammed, Resurrecting Cybele

“Atheism is a lack of belief...what about the powers of darkness, and that of light, will you trace both to nothing? Then you must have created yourself.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The celebrations go on for many hours,' said the woman. Above her, in the sky, a firework exploded, showering multi-coloured flames across the stars. 'You can pay fealty at any time.' Another firework tore open the sky, streams of colour painting the woman's shift blue and green, throwing their shadows downwards. For a moment, the woman's shadow self moved against the shadow Fillingham, pressing to him, and then another explosion above them sent them dancing apart, wavering, their edges rimed with yellow and reds, and then the woman was moving again.

("The Cotswold Olimpicks")”
― Reggie Oliver, Best New Horror 24

“Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the same level with the Andaman or the Fiji Islands. That a country which has been recognised in all ages the world over as the mother of all religions and the cradle of civilisation should be considered as pagan, shows how much ignorance prevails in Christendom.

Since the Parliament of Religions, I have been studying Christian institutions, and I have also studied the way in which the Christian ministers and the missionaries are manufactured in this country, and have learned to pity them. We must not blame them too severely, because their education is too narrow to make them broad-minded. I grant that they are good-hearted, that they are good husbands and often fathers of large families, but generally they are very ignorant, especially of the history of civilisation and of the philosophy of religion of India. Most of them do not even know the history of ancient India.

We know that in this age of competition, centralisation, and monopoly, very many people are forced out of business. The English say, 'The fool of the family goes into the Church'; so that when a youth is unable to make a living, he takes to missionary work, goes to India, and helps to introduce among the Hindus the doctrines of his church, which have long since been exploded by science.”
― Virchand Gandhi, The Monist

“He wasn’t my type. He wasn’t safe. But I didn’t care.”
― Abbi Glines, Ceaseless

“The evolutionists, piercing beneath the show of momentary stability, discovered, hidden in rudimentary organs, the discarded rubbish of the past. They detected the reptile under the lifted feathers of the bird, the lost terrestrial limbs dwindling beneath the blubber of the giant cetaceans. They saw life rushing outward from an unknown center, just as today the astronomer senses the galaxies fleeing into the infinity of darkness. As the spinning galactic clouds hurl stars and worlds across the night, so life, equally impelled by the centrifugal powers lurking in the germ cell, scatters the splintered radiance of consciousness and sends it prowling and contending through the thickets of the world.”
― Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower

“Again burst out that chant McKay had heard as he had floated through the mists upon the lake. Now, as then, despite his opened ears, he could distinguish no words, but clearly he understood its mingled themes - the joy of Spring's awakening, rebirth, with the green life streaming singing up through every bough, swelling the buds, burgeoning with tender leaves the branches; the dance of the trees in the scented winds of Spring; the drums of the jubilant rain on leafy hoods; passion of Summer sun pouring its golden flood down upon the trees; the moon passing with stately step and slow and green hands stretching up to her and drawing from her breast milk of silver fire; riot of wild gay winds with their mad pipings and strummings; - soft interlacing of boughs, the kiss of amorous leaves - all these and more, much more that McKay could not understand for it dealt with hidden, secret things for which man has no images.

("The Women Of The Woods")”
― A. Merritt, Masters of Horror

“A long time ago I lived in Lisbon,' she said, in softly slurred Portuguese that made the name of the city Leesh-boa. 'But before that, meus neto, my tribe was in the mountains where there are only old things, like the trees and the rocks and the streams. There are truths to be learned from the old things -' She hesitated, and her brown, shrunken claw closed over Pete's hand. 'Do you know the truth, Pedrinho?'

("Before I Wake...")”
― Henry Kuttner, Masters of Horror

“{Stockton, a playwright who performed plays about Robert Ingersoll, gives the four moments in Ingersoll's life that shaped him, first being the death of his father, who was a reverend}

Despite their opposing religious views, the old revivalist on his deathbed asked Bob to read to him from the black book clutched to his chest. Bob relented, took the book, and was surprised to discover that it wasn't the Bible. It was Plato describing the noble death of the pagan Socrates: a moving gesture of reconciliation between father and son in parting. The second event was Bob’s painful realization that his outspoken agnosticism not only invalidated his own political career but ended his brother Ebon’s career in Congress, as well. Third was the exquisite anguish of seeing his supportive wife Eva and his young daughters made to suffer for his right to speak his own mind. And fourth was the dramatic tension of having to walk out alone on public stages, in a glaring spotlight, time after time with death threats jammed in his tuxedo pocket informing him that some armed bigot in that night’s audience would see to it that he didn't leave the stage alive.”
― Richard F. Stockton

“I have learned a great deal from other Witches, Wiccans, Odinists, Voodoo and Hoodou practitioners, Druids and many others who consider themselves Pagan. The one common thread is that every single person has been nonjudgmental. Isn't this what it's all about, acceptance? Are we not here to design our own spiritual path? --Icinia”
― Arin Murphy-Hiscock, Out of the Broom Closet: 50 True Stories of Witches Who Found and Embraced the Craft

“I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin' to solid sense and learning, regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life, especially Protestant American religious life, that things bottom out completely.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“The pagan gods are not dead, but can return to topple science with superstition and modern man with bestial pleasures that pre-date civilisation.”
― Richard Luckhurst

“I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste.”
― Georges Bizet

“Hillingham first saw the women by the dwile flonkers. He had spent the day walking around Dover's Hill, the shallow amphitheatre where the Cotswold Olimpick Games took place and had taken, he thought, some good photographs so far. The place was heaving and he had captured some of that, he hoped; the shifting bustle as people flocked from event to event and laughed and shouted and ate and drank. The sound of cymbals and mandolins and violins and guitars filled the air about the crowd, leaping around the brightly costumed figures and the smells of roasting meat and open fires.

("The Cotswold Olimpicks")”
― Reggie Oliver, Best New Horror 24

“Fillingham first saw the women by the dwile flonkers. He had spent the day walking around Dover's Hill, the shallow amphitheatre where the Cotswold Olimpick Games took place and had taken, he thought, some good photographs so far. The place was heaving and he had captured some of that, he hoped; the shifting bustle as people flocked from event to event and laughed and shouted and ate and drank. The sound of cymbals and mandolins and violins and guitars filled the air about the crowd, leaping around the brightly costumed figures and the smells of roasting meat and open fires.

("The Cotswold Olimpicks")”
― Reggie Oliver, Best New Horror 24