Tanith Lee on Religion
Browse 9 quotations attributed to Tanith Lee, catalogued under Religion, with dates where available.
This page displays 9 quotations attributed to Tanith Lee and filed under "Religion" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Tanith Lee, entry #229404: "I found a glimmering brown skull in the snow. I could not tell if it was mortal or god, and there seemed a sobering moral in that."
Attributed to Tanith Lee, entry #157925: "There was no room in him for curiosity; The capacity for observation had long since starved on the aridness of his soul."
9 Quotes by Tanith Lee on Religion
"I found a glimmering brown skull in the snow. I could not tell if it was mortal or god, and there seemed a sobering moral in that."
"There was no room in him for curiosity; The capacity for observation had long since starved on the aridness of his soul."
"Destiny or gods or fortune—whatever one is pleased or innocent enough to call them—they seal men to their decree."
"Tonight it was to be a play for aristocrats to watch, concerning gods and shepherds; it was the humble villages that clamored for princesses and emperors."
"He had been too near the hard facts of religions as a child to find it soothing."
"Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone."
"I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god."
"Men cried to their gods. In the morning they would slay each other; by night, fresh from the battlefield, they raved before unreplying altars. So they came to hate even the gods, and smashed their images and defiled their sanctums. “There are no gods!” they cried. “Then who has done this thing to us?"
"The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked."