James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic
Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw1.html of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). <br class="br">Four star reviews
James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic
Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw1.html of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). <br class="br">Four star reviews
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)
Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions
In p. 1.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata
Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator
Brazil v. United States http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=ke8XNArZvVU (10 July 2011). <br class="br">2010s, 2011, 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-trek-ii-the-wrath-of-khan-1982 of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1 January 1982) <br class="br">Reviews, Three star reviews
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist
The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)
“When the characters of epic and heroic saga are on significant missions, they are led divinely.”
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VII Further Observations on Homer
Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)
Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement
The Smartphone Wars: The Stages of Apple-Cultist Denial http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3132 in Armed and Dangerous (18 April 2011)
Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist
"Exploring The Religious Naturalist Option", 13.7: Cosmos & Culture (23 November 2014) http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/11/23/366104014/exploring-the-religious-naturalist-option <br class="br">Context: Scientific inquiry has provisioned us with a mind-boggling new core narrative — the epic of evolution, the epic of creation, the universe story, big history, everybody's story — where humans and human cultures are understood to be emergent from and, hence, a part of nature.<br>Naturalists adopt this account as their core narrative, with full recognition that these understandings will certainly deepen and may shift with further scientific inquiry. They adopt the story currently on offer and do not simply select features of the story that support preferred theories of nature. … A religious naturalist is a naturalist who has adopted the epic as a core narrative and goes on to explore its religious potential, developing interpretive, spiritual and moral/ethical responses to the story.<br>Importantly, these responses are not front-loaded into the story as they are in the traditions. Therefore, the religious naturalist engages in a process, both individually and in the company of fellow explorers, to discover and experience them. These explorations are informed and guided by the mindful understandings inherent in our human traditions, including art, literature, philosophy and the religions of the world.
“Despise it not, ye Bards to terror steel'd,
Who hurl'd your thunders round the epic field”
Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat
Canto 1: st. 1, lines 1–10
The Hasty-Pudding (1793)
Context: Despise it not, ye Bards to terror steel'd,
Who hurl'd your thunders round the epic field;
Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing
Joys that the vineyard and the still-house bring;
Or on some distant fair your notes employ,
And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy.
I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening meal,
The sweets of Hasty-Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
Context: If archeology had yielded only the Epic of Kret, we would have enough to bridge the gap between the Iliad and Genesis. But... our new sources are so rich that we have only begun... The years ahead bid fair to be the most fruitful in the annals of Classical and Biblical scholarship. Our debt to the Bible and Classics is so great that this type of research will deepen our understanding of our culture and of ourselves.
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer
On the progress of The Wise Man's Fear in "Concerning the Release of Book Two" (26 February 2009) http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/02/concerning-the-release-of-book-two/ <br class="br">Official site <br class="br">Context: My book is different.<br>In case you hadn't noticed, the story I'm telling is a little different. It's a little shy on the Aristotelian unities. It doesn't follow the classic Hollywood three-act structure. It's not like a five-act Shakespearean play. It's not like a Harlequin romance.<br>So what *is* the structure then? Fuck if I know. That's part of what's taking me so long to figure out. As far as I can tell, my story is part autobiography, part hero's journey, part epic fantasy, part travelogue, part faerie tale, part coming of age story, part romance, part mystery, part metafictional-nested-story-frame-tale-something-or-other.<br>I am, quite frankly, making this up as I go. If I get it right, I get something like The Name of the Wind. Something that makes all of us happy.<br>But if I fuck it up, I'll end up with a confusing tangled mess of a story.<br>Now I'm not trying to claim that I'm unique in this. That I'm some lone pioneer mapping the uncharted storylands. Other authors do it too. My point is that doing something like this takes more time that writing another shitty, predictable Lord of the Rings knockoff.<br>Sometimes I think it would be nice to write a that sort of book. It would be nice to be able to use those well-established structures like a sort of recipe. A map. A paint-by-numbers kit.<br>It would be so much easier, and quicker. But it wouldn't be a better book. And it's not really the sort of book I want to write.
Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary
Address to the United Nations (1964)
Context: This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers.
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VII Further Observations on Homer <!-- p.224, 1965 paper -->
Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature
Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 174
Context: Humans need stories — grand compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story — what we are calling religious naturalism — can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions. This mythos comes to us, often in experiences called revelation, from the sages and the artists of past and present times.
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer
Roadstrum, in Ch. 8
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hellpepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic is already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time — it will not end the same now!
“Sarah and Dinah are heroines according to the standards of royal epic.”
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
Context: Once we recognize the factor of royal epic in Genesis, we see that the Helen-of-Troy motif permeates the Patriarchal Narratives.... Like Helen and Hurrai, Sarah and Dinah are heroines according to the standards of royal epic.
Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) English poet and writer
Letter to Edward Byles Cowell, quoted in The Life of Edward FitzGerald, Translator of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyán (1947) by Alfred McKinley Terhune, p. 146.
Context: Science unrolls a greater epic than the Iliad. The present day teems with new discoveries in Fact, which are greater, as regards the soul and prospect of men, than all the disquisitions and quiddities of the Schoolmen. A few fossil bones in clay and limestone have opened a greater vista back into time than the Indian imagination ventured upon for its Gods: and every day turns up something new. This vision of Time must not only wither the poet's hope of immortality, it is in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton.
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist
Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])
Context: That both the Gilgamesh Epic and the Odyssey deal with the episodic wanderings of a hero, would not be sufficiently specific to establish a genuine relation between them. But when both epics begin with the declaration that the hero gained experience from his wide wanderings, and end with his homecoming, a relationship dimly appears.... when we note that whole episodes are in essential agreement, we are on firmer ground. For instance, both Gilgamesh and Odysseus reject a goddess's proposal for marriage; and each of the heroes interviews his dead companion in Hades.
“Feminine passion is to masculine as an epic is to an epigram. ”
Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist
Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster
On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)
Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist
... To sum up, what does the evidence of
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres
“See also Epic, Human Giant, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Parks and Recreation.”
Aziz Ansari (1983) American actor and stand-up comedian
“Valmiki (14th - 15th century B. C.), the author of the epic Ramayana, bears comparison with Homer.”
Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana
Valmiki
Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint
Vincent Smith in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", pp.34-35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas
Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint
K. R. Sundararajan in Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern http://books.google.co.in/books?id=LO0DpWElIRIC&pg=PA306&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Bhakti&f=false, p. 73
Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint
Shiva Kumar Tripathi in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 36
“Science unrolls a greater epic than the Iliad.”
Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) English poet and writer
The present day teems with new discoveries in Fact, which are greater, as regards the soul and prospect of men, than all the disquisitions and quiddities of the Schoolmen. A few fossil bones in clay and limestone have opened a greater vista back into time than the Indian imagination ventured upon for its Gods: and every day turns up something new. This vision of Time must not only wither the poet's hope of immortality, it is in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton.
Letter to Edward Byles Cowell, quoted in The Life of Edward FitzGerald, Translator of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyán (1947) by Alfred McKinley Terhune, p. 146.
Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party
Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
Stephen M. Walt (1955) American political scientist
Quoted byJulian Borger in US awol from world stage as China tries on global leadership for size, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/29/us-awol-from-world-stage-as-china-tries-on-global-leadership-for-size, Berger followed the quote with the words: Walt wrote in Foreign Policy, in a commentary titled “the death of American competence https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/death-american-competence-reputation-coronavirus/”, March 29, 2020
James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author
Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. “Don’t you see? It’s the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.”
Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 390; spoken by the Devil, named Jonathan Sarkos in the book)
Susan Sontag book AIDS and Its Metaphors
Source: AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7 ; later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.
Dril Twitter user
[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1288582330261467136] <br class="br">Tweets by year, 2020
Lynn Shelton (1965–2020) American film director, screenwriter, film editor, actress and film producer (1965-2020)
Journalist Tim Teeman's Blog - Lynn Shelton: Hannah, her sister and their lover - 19 June 2012 https://www.timteeman.com/2012/06/19/lynn-shelton-hannah-her-sister-and-their-lover/ - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210727184304/https://www.timteeman.com/2012/06/19/lynn-shelton-hannah-her-sister-and-their-lover/
“Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.”
Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian
Source: Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, p. 100.
“I was once dead but I live again, I think independence is epic fortnite win.”
Olof Palme (1927–1986) Swedish 20th century prime minister