The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.

This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths.

In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

The land of a god corresponds with the land of his worshipers.

That the God-man died for his people, and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in some degree foreshadowed by the older mystical sacrifices.

This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis... only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of which the original meaning is lost.

We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men; and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

The god can no more exist without his people than the nation without its god.

But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.

But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches.

The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity.

In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

The god, it would appear, was frequently thought of as the physical progenitor or first father of his people.

Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper no one cared what he believed about its origin.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

Welcome, wild harbinger of spring! To this small nook of earth; Feeling and fancy fondly cling, Round thoughts which owe their birth, To thee, and to the humble spot, Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, 'Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.'

There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power to bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying that they wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, to bring back the Middle Ages.

Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I know that syndrome. I fancy offices, so there must be something wrong with me. Even the window cleaner intrigues me. It's a very sexy environment.

I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern.

I fancy that no good ideas upon that campaign will be mentioned at any time that did not receive their share of consideration by General Lee.

I fancy our chances at the European Championships.

I would advise you to write, my dear friend, because with your active nature, solitude is simply intolerable to you, and after some time your solitude would become perhaps attractive if you were to people it with creatures of your own fancy.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

We happened to be in the studio next door and I think Noel Redding came around and said, 'Do you fancy having a sing on this?' We just went and did it and it was great.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

Why do you need to do a fancy cartwheel for before you hit him? It just looks stupid.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts are hard to read and invite flights of fancy or corruption.

I don't get to go to the super fancy stores unless I am in L.A. so you stay pretty real and normal that way.

You speak into it and everything is recorded, voice, tone, intonation, everything. You turn a little wheel, and forth it comes, and can be repeated ten thousand times. Only fancy what this suggests.

Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

The best real-estate investments with the highest yields are in working-class neighborhoods, because fancy properties are overpriced.

I only knew basic western trail riding. Nothing fancy.

Buonaparte has often made his boast that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea and that his was kept in order and increasing by staying in port; but know he finds, I fancy, if Emperors hear the truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night than ours in one year.

The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.