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1 " Storytellers seldom let facts get in the way of perpetuating a legend, although a few facts add seasoning and make the legend more believable. "
― John Alexander
2 " I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. "
3 " This is the legend of Cassius Clay, The most beautiful fighter in the world today.He talks a great deal, and brags indeed-y, of a muscular punch that's incredibly speed-y.The fistic world was dull and weary,But with a champ like Liston, things had to be dreary.Then someone with color and someone with dash, Brought fight fans are runnin' with Cash.This brash young boxer is something to see And the heavyweight championship is his des-tin-y.This kid fights great; he’s got speed and endurance,But if you sign to fight him, increase your insurance.This kid's got a left; this kid's got a right,If he hit you once, you're asleep for the night.And as you lie on the floor while the ref counts ten,You’ll pray that you won’t have to fight me again.For I am the man this poem’s about,The next champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt.This I predict and I know the score,I’ll be champ of the world in ’64.When I say three, they’ll go in the third,10 months agoSo don’t bet against me, I’m a man of my word.He is the greatest! Yes!I am the man this poem’s about,I’ll be champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt.Here I predict Mr. Liston’s dismemberment,I’ll hit him so hard; he’ll wonder where October and November went.When I say two, there’s never a third,Standin against me is completely absurd.When Cassius says a mouse can outrun a horse,Don’t ask how; put your money where your mouse is!I AM THE GREATEST! "
― Muhammad Ali
4 " The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked.'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.''But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked.'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!'The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.''What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought. "
5 " Do you see this lantern? cried Syme in a terrible voice.'Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind, you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it. "
― G.K. Chesterton , The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
6 " As the legend goes, when the Phoenix resurrects from the flames, she is even more beautiful than before. "
― Danielle LaPorte
7 " Anticipating their calamity and fright when deportation day came (August 6, 1942) he [Henryk Goldszmit, pen name: Janusz Korczak] joined them aboard the train bound for Treblinka, because, he said, he knew his presence would calm them—“You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.” A photograph taken at the Umschlagplatz (Transshipment Square) shows him marching, hatless, in military boots, hand in hand with several children, while 192 other children and ten staff members follow, four abreast, escorted by German soldiers. Korczak and the children boarded red boxcars not much larger than chicken coops, usually stuffed with seventy-five vertical adults, though all the children easily fit. In Joshua Perle’s eyewitness account in The Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, he describes the scene: “A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak.”In 1971, the Russians named a newly discovered asteroid after him, 2163 Korczak, but maybe they should have named it Ro, the planet he dreamed of. The Poles claim Korczak as a martyr, and the Israelis revere him as one of the Thirty-Six Just Men, whose pure souls make possible the world’s salvation. According to Jewish legend, these few, through their good hearts and good deeds, keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed. For their sake alone, all of humanity is spared. The legend tells that they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno. "
― Diane Ackerman
8 " But nothing happened there now of a nature to provoke a disturbance. There were no complaints to the management or the police, and the dark glory of the upper galleries was a legend in such memories as that of the late Emiel Kroger and the present Pablo Gonzales, and one by one, of course, those memories died out and the legend died out with them. Places like the Joy Rio and the legends about them make one more than usually aware of the short bloom and the long fading out of things. (" The Mysteries of the Joy Rio" ) "
9 " With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King’s Cross, and were under blue sky. Tunnels followed, and after each the sky grew bluer, and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight of the sun. It rolled along behind the eastern smokes — a wheel, whose fellow was the descending moon — and as yet it seemed the servant of the blue sky, not its lord. He dozed again. Over Tewin Water it was day. To the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches; to the right Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church, with its wild legend of immortality. Six forest trees — that is a fact — grow out of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard. The grave’s occupant — that is the legend — is an atheist, who declared that if God existed, six forest trees would grow out of her grave. These things in Hertfordshire; and farther afield lay the house of a hermit — Mrs. Wilcox had known him — who barred himself up, and wrote prophecies, and gave all he had to the poor. While, powdered in between, were the villas of business men, who saw life more steadily, though with the steadiness of the half-closed eye. Over all the sun was streaming, to all the birds were singing, to all the primroses were yellow, and the speedwell blue, and the country, however they interpreted her, was uttering her cry of “now. ” She did not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had become beautiful. "
― E.M. Forster , Howards End
10 " The past that Southerners are forever talking about is not a dead past--it is a chapter from the legend that our kinfolks have told us, it is a living past, living for a reason. The past is a part of the present, it is a comfort, a guide, a lesson. "
― , Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory
11 " He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who'd gone before those heroes, about whether they'd been at each other's throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren't going to make it, weren't going to beat those long odds--that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed. "
12 " The Legend of Robert HalseyThis article examines the criminal conviction of Robert Halsey for sexually abusing two young boys on his school-van route near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Mr. Halsey's name has been invoked by academics, journalists, and activists as the victim of the “witch hunt” in this country over child sexual abuse. Based on a comprehensive examination of the trial transcript, this article details the overwhelming evidence of guilt against Mr. Halsey. The credulous acceptance of the “false conviction” legend about Robert Halsey provides a case study in the techniques and tactics used to minimize and deny sexual abuse, while promoting a narrative about “ritual abuse” and “witch hunts” that apparently requires little or no factual basis. The second part of this article analyzes how the erroneous “false conviction” narrative about Robert Halsey was constructed and how it gained widespread acceptance. The Legend of Robert Halsey provides a cautionary tale about how easy it is to wrap even the guiltiest person in a cloak of righteous “witch hunt” claims. Cases identified as “false convictions” by defense lawyers and political activists deserve far greater scrutiny from the media and the public.journal: Cheit, Ross E. " The Legend of Robert Halsey." Journal of child sexual abuse 9.3-4 (2002): 37-52. "
13 " You are the first of your kind. Books will be written about you. Be the legend you are meant to be. - Astral "
― Candace Knoebel , Embracing the Flames (The Born in Flames Trilogy Book 2)
14 " If you're struggling uphill; carrying your heavy load; fighting to stay afloat or battling your demons, know that you are definitely on the right path, and ascending to the place where you will one day embody the legend you seek to become. "
15 " I desperately want to talk to her now. I want to ask her who it was who so deftly crafted and shaped the legend that was our love. "
― Dan Simmons , Prayers to Broken Stones (Hyperion Cantos #0.5)
16 " I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours "
― Jack Kerouac , Tristessa
17 " Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pagentry it was! THe Spear had passed like the very finger of destiny through the millenium forever creating new patterns of fate which had again and again changed the entire history of Europe. ... According to the legend associated with the Spear of Longinus, the claimant to this talisman of power has a choice between the service of two opposing Spirits in the fulfilment of his world historic aims -- a Good and an Evil Spirit. "
― , The Spear of Destiny
18 " I heard Mansour say to Richard, ‘You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood — and still do?’ Richard said to him, ‘All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.’ They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone’s throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them. "
― Tayeb Salih , Season of Migration to the North
19 " Maybe the moral of the legend is that we are all carved, created, and formed by a master hand. Maybe we are all works of art. "
― Amy Harmon , A Different Blue
20 " Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and orchards of Afghanistan. And as the water and the words rush past, who can fail to turn to his neighbor and whisper, with humility and awe-if this is what the weakest, the least valued, the most neglected among us are capable of achieving, truly is there anything we cannot do? "
― Greg Mortenson , Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
