A Quote by Michael Shermer

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

Michael Shermer

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Fact Historical Literary Myth Plato

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Michael Shermer
American - Writer
Born: September 8, 1954

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

C. S. Lewis

As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth...Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.

Kathleen Raine

Historical fiction is not only a respectable literary form; it is a standing reminder of the fact that history is about human beings.

Helen Cam

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

Joseph Campbell

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.

C. S. Lewis

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

Robert Penn Warren

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.

Robert Green Ingersoll

'War and Peace' holds a strange place in literary history, participating in the crowning of realism as a substantial and serious literary mode in America, even as the novel also contributed to the argument that historical fiction could be by nature dangerous, illegitimate, and inaccurate.

Alexander Chee

Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.

F. F. Bruce

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato.... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, " Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched.

Plato

I don't read a lot of fiction, but one of my favorite authors is William Kennedy; his books, to me, almost read like historical dramas because the mythologies are so detailed as he wove fiction with the factual history of Albany.

Kurt Sutter

[Sacrifice of Isaac] is a major theme of the so-called Elohist [one authorial strand in the Pentateuch]. It is marked by all of his linguistic characteristics, and so on. We cannot determine what is historical and what isn't. As literary critics, we would understand the importance of this for understanding life, destiny. But the historical question must be left with a question mark.

Frank Moore Cross

In 'Labor Day Hurricane, 1935,' Douglas Trevor vividly recreates a historical event. While that is the only story in A THIN TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE in the historical past, many of the other stories juxtapose fact-both historical and scientific-with narration to an engaging effect, one that distinguishes the voice of this new writer.

Stuart Dybek

That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.

Bertrand Russell

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

Lauren Willig

A Quote by Michael Shermer

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