Icarus Quotes

Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,
Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,
See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous. (Stephen Vincent Benét)

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

Pick your myth - we're either Pandora or Prometheus or, frankly, maybe Icarus. We are in a tipping-point era, and we have to either catch up to our abilities, culturally, or some massive global catastrophe will befall us. The planet will live on, but we're going to make it more difficult for us to survive.

Joshua Jackson

Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.

Oscar Wilde

Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure.

Alison Bechdel

But I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

Randall Munroe

The dream [of flying] is as old as Icarus... I too want to give back to man the feeling of flight [with his 'Letatlin'-air-bike, 1929-1932]. This we have been robbed of by the mechanical flight of the aeroplane. We cannot feel the movement of our body in the air.

Vladimir Tatlin

The way 'The Icarus Girl' came about was by me just basically bragging it with a literary agent and telling him I'd written 150 pages when I'd only written 20. And I think it was when the agent e-mailed me back right the very next day after sending him the 20 pages and asking to see the other 130.

Helen Oyeyemi

Backward we traveled to reclaim the day Before we fell, like Icarus, undone; All we find are altars in decay And profane words scrawled black across the sun. --From the poem "Doom of the Exiles", written 16 April 1954.

Sylvia Plath