Icarus Quotes

“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”
― Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

“Do I, then, belong to the heavens?
Why, if not so, should the heavens
Fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,
Luring me on, and my mind, higher
Ever higher, up into the sky,
Drawing me ceaselessly up
To heights far, far above the human?
Why, when balance has been strictly studied
And flight calculated with the best of reason
Till no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-
Why, still, should the lust for ascension
Seem, in itself, so close to madness?
Nothing is that can satify me;
Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;
I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,
Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.
Why do these rays of reason destroy me?
Villages below and meandering streams
Grow tolerable as our distance grows.
Why do they plead, approve, lure me
With promise that I may love the human
If only it is seen, thus, from afar-
Although the goal could never have been love,
Nor, had it been, could I ever have
Belonged to the heavens?
I have not envied the bird its freedom
Nor have I longed for the ease of Nature,
Driven by naught save this strange yearning
For the higher, and the closer, to plunge myself
Into the deep sky's blue, so contrary
To all organic joys, so far
From pleasures of superiority
But higher, and higher,
Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescence
Of waxen wings.

Or do I then
Belong, after all, to the earth?
Why, if not so, should the earth
Show such swiftness to encompass my fall?
Granting no space to think or feel,
Why did the soft, indolent earth thus
Greet me with the shock of steel plate?
Did the soft earth thus turn to steel
Only to show me my own softness?
That Nature might bring home to me
That to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,
More natural by far than that improbable passion?
Is the blue of the sky then a dream?
Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,
On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxication
Achieved for a moment by waxen wings?
And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?
To punish me for not believing in myself
Or for believing too much;
Too earger to know where lay my allegiance
Or vainly assuming that already I knew all;
For wanting to fly off
To the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“Icarus should have waited for nightfall,
the moon would have never let him go.”
― Nina Mouawad

“Icarus flew too close to the sun, but at least he flew.”
― Jeremy Robert Johnson, Skullcrack City

“Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall.”
― Dwight Longenecker, The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

“Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.”
― E.O. Wilson

“It's hard to know that you're flying too high until the feathers start dropping.”
― Darcie Little Badger, Elatsoe

“I feel the familiar pull—I am drawn, Icarus to his sun. I have been burned already, and yet here I am again.

~Anastasia”
― E.L. James, Fifty Shades Darker

“Here is what they don’t tell you:

Icarus laughed as he fell.
Threw his head back and
yelled into the winds,
arms spread wide,
teeth bared to the world.

(There is a bitter triumph
in crashing when you should be
soaring.)

The wax scorched his skin,
ran blazing trails down his back,
his thighs, his ankles, his feet.
Feathers floated like prayers
past his fingers,
close enough to snatch back.
Death breathed burning kisses
against his shoulders,
where the wings joined the harness.
The sun painted everything
in shades of gold.

(There is a certain beauty
in setting the world on fire
and watching from the centre
of the flames.)”
― Fiona

“Love is not weakness, father: it is strength. Love is what taught my skin to feel and my eyes to see. Love is not a weapon: it is light.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Rare stories traveled of those who rose too high, the ships who sailed like Icarus towards the sun.

And like him, they crashed and burned for their arrogance.”
― Katherine McIntyre, The Airship Also Rises

“Love is weakness, Icarus, the man had said, grim, 'It is Man’s deadliest weapon, greater than the sword and mightier than the axe—because it can destroy you with a single breath.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Some upstarts always try to get closer to the source of creation by ascending to the source's level. The story of Icarus is of course a parable about the folly of such an effort. Get too close to the sun and your hubris will get you burned. Yet in the eyes of twenty-first-century capitalist culture, which worships at the twin altars of the individual and technology, Icarus had initiative. And his melted wings do not represent some deep character flaw; he just needed better beta testers.”
― Marcus Wohlsen, Biopunk: Kitchen-Counter Scientists Hack the Software of Life

“don't fly too close to the sun," Tess Calls. "you'll burn the tips of your wings. Stay right with me. i'll keep you safe.”
― Marcella Pixley

“He would be the sun Taran mac Delbaith flew too close to.”
― Kellen Graves, Lord of Silver Ashes

“And it’s suddenly, blindingly obvious. He’s too gloriously good-looking. We are poles apart and from two very different worlds. I have a vision of myself as Icarus flying too close to the sun and crashing and burning as a result.

~Anastasia”
― E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

“I'm looking for the labyrinth. The form that Dedalus gave me to the most disturbing question: How much of us is thought, reason, intellect... and how much delirium, hallucination, madness... and how much is a monster. The failure of every plan. A path with no way out.”
― Manuele Fior, Red Ultramarine

“Falling from a great height, the wings on his back were nothing but melted wax and scattered feathers.
He never should have flown so close, no matter how warm and decadent Cylvan's light had been.”
― Kellen Graves, Lord of Silver Ashes

“I didn't relish the idea of another long evening, waiting for Tuesday, that was part of it. But in truth, I was feeling puffed up at my success. The boy is to come here, to my apartment. He has agreed. He is coming alone, Tuesday evening. We have looked at Icarus together and he has given me his secret smile and he is coming.”
― Bethan Roberts, My Policeman

“Though Eros and Psyche sat vast and magnificent in the front lawn, a prologue to the grand house itself, there was something wonderful- a mysterious and melancholic aspect- about the smaller fountain, hidden within its sunny clearing at the bottom of the south garden.
The circular pool of stacked stone stood two feet high and twenty feet across at its widest point. It was lined with tiny glass tiles, azure blue like the necklace of sapphires Lord Ashbury had brought back for Lady Violet after serving in the Far East. From the center emerged a huge craggy block of russet marble, the height of two men, thick at the base but tapering to a peak. Midway up, creamy marble against the brown, the life-size figure of Icarus had been carved in a position of recline. His wings, pale marble etched to give the impression of feathers, were strapped to his outspread arms and fell behind, weeping over the rock. Rising from the pool to tend the fallen figure were three mermaids, long hair looped and coiled about angelic faces: one held a small harp, one wore a coronet of woven ivy leaves, and one reached beneath Icarus’s torso, white hands on creamy skin, to pull him from the deep.”
― Kate Morton, The House at Riverton

“Daedalus said you shouldn’t fly too low. If you do, the water will fatally weigh down your wings and you will surely perish. Don’t fly too high either. The sun will melt the wax holding your wings together, and you will plunge to your death. So, moderation in all things. Always follow the middle course. How dull. Set your sights higher. Go as high as you can, all the way to the top. We are the people of the peaks, not the middle of the road.”
― Joe Dixon, Why God Should Go to Hell: How God Is Outside the Moral Order

“It’s not enough nearly to survive. One needs to flourish. One must not look to fly low. One must emulate Icarus and try to fly as high as possible. Damn the sun. Let’s make heat-resistant wax for our wings!”
― Jack Tanner, The Source of Dreams: When Human Imagination Died

“Daedalus took comfort in the baby Icarus, and I loved to see him walking about with the infant dandled in his arms, showing the oblivious child the flowers and the birds and the many wonders of the palace.”
― Jennifer Saint, Ariadne

“I was arrogant. It's a classic story of hubris. I'm like Icarus whose wings melted before he could fuck the sun.”
― Nicky Nichols

“I had not fooled myself with false hope. I was a goddess, and he a mortal, and both of us were imprisoned. But I pressed his face into my mind, as seals are pressed in wax, so I could carry it with me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The air is not empty space to them, it is as solid as the earth to us, or water to a fish. It holds them up and it will hold us up.”
― Stephen Fry, Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures

“Floris lachte en zeeg in slaap in zijn zetel. Pieter bezag het hoofd van de kunstenaar. Hij streelde hem stillekens over zijn roze gezicht, en prevelde vol medelijden: ‘Arme Baskonter, arme paddestoel, die teert op Michelangelo; arme Icarus, die met wassen vleugelen ten hemel stijgt, naar de zon, die ze smelt’ – op een rijnse prent had hij die ongelukkige sukkeleer getekend – ‘en al die renaissancisten zijn van dezelfde deeg! Waarom blijft ge niet beneden : de wereld is zo schoon!’ …
En in zijn verbeelding zag hij de schone straat van Messina weer levendig voor d’ogen; en daar beneden, in ’t water, te midden van de pracht, zag hij, hulpeloos en klein, twee roze beentjes spartelen van de arme Icarus die in ’t water gevallen was! Hij schudde de komende vaak van zijn huid, stond op en ging de kriekende, frisse morgen in.
Een nieuwe schilderij begon te groeien.”
― Felix Timmermans, Pieter Bruegel, zoo heb ik u uit uw werken geroken

“I had this real hardass for a tutorial in grad school,' Jeannine finally said. 'And this one time when I told him that maybe my project hadn't panned out because it had been too ambitious, he said that he'd always thought that the moral of the Icarus story was not 'Don't try to fly too high.' He said he thought it was 'Do a better job on the wings.”
― Jim Shepard, Phase Six

“I am like Icarus without wings. But the desire to fly was very strong in me. I think I was always looking for a Daedalus.”
― Sarah Dunant, The Birth of Venus