Icarus QUOTES

1 " I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is. "

― Eugène Ionesco , Notes and Counternotes

2 " They flew to avoid the horrors of land and sea, Daedalus and Icarus were for few moments free. Though the sun was Icarus' ultimate bane, we came to always remember his name. For he felt the sun's burn, a lesson Daedalus would never learn. When he found his son's corpse and looked upon his face, he saw a smile there fastened in place. He continued his life wondering what his son had seen, hoping it was worth it since his dead smile was so serene. The sun always seemed to mock him after, shining, brilliant, blinding laughter. Daedalus grew withered and haunted by light, preferring the sea's air in the depths of night. He watched lunar birds soar through the stars and away, forever regretting his decision to take flight during the day. He had lost his son to the sun in a twist of anomaly, he wondered which of them truly escaped that day, in all honesty. "

3 " Tragedy is born of myth, not morality. Prometheus and Icarus are tragic heroes. Yet none of the myths in which they appear has anything to do with moral dilemmas. Nor have the greatest Greek tragedies.

If Euripides is the most tragic of the Greek playwrights, it is not because he deals with moral conflicts but because he understood that reason cannot be the guide of life. "

― John N. Gray , Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

4 " Logan felt like Icarus. He had never felt so free and blissfully alive as he did whenever he was with her. The closer he got to her the higher and happier he felt. Even at the mention of her name his heart would pound incessantly and all the giddy feelings he didn’t quite understand would suddenly reemerge. Every glance upon her blinding beauty cast a shadow upon every other girl for him. Everyone else paled in comparison to her. With every passing moment he had somehow discovered something new and exciting about her. With her by his side he could feel the light breeze flapping against his sides and the warmth of sunshine beating down on his handsome face. This is what it meant to be truly awake. This is what it meant to be in love.
But just like Icarus he had gotten too close and had crashed and burned. As he lay crippled in the aftermath of his own destruction he wondered what hurt more the aching pangs of physical pain his body had been subjected to or the raw burning sensation he felt in his heart. He had gladly given her his heart and in return she threw it back in pieces claiming it wasn’t enough. That he wasn’t enough. "

― Ali Harper , Breaking Bedlam (Beautiful Bedlam #2)

5 " Thus, Marlowe posed the silent question: could aspiring Icarus be happy with a toilsome life on land managing a plough with plodding oxen having once tasted the weightless bliss of flight? "

― E.A. Bucchianeri , Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World Volume 1

6 " Some upstarts always try to get closer to the source of creation by ascending to the source's level. The story of Icarus is of course a parable about the folly of such an effort. Get too close to the sun and your hubris will get you burned. Yet in the eyes of twenty-first-century capitalist culture, which worships at the twin altars of the individual and technology, Icarus had initiative. And his melted wings do not represent some deep character flaw; he just needed better beta testers. "

― , Biopunk: Kitchen-Counter Scientists Hack the Software of Life

7 " I think I finally understand the saying like a moth to a flame. I’m the moth. My heart flutters like the paper thin wings. And he is the flame, incendiary, scorching my soul.
He inhales so heavily, like he’s been holding his breath under water. He presses his lips against mine and tugs at my hair gently. My head falls back and my mouth falls open. His tongue, slick as silver, dances with mine.
I’m wrong. I’m not a moth. I’m Icarus and I’ve flown too close to the sun. "

― Elden Dare , Born Wicked (The Wicked Sorcer Series #1)

8 " Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall. "

― Dwight Longenecker , The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

9 " unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning "

― William Carlos Williams

10 " If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher, the law of averages - not to mention the myth of Icarus - predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. "