Yet the great “Why?” always at the center of the little “whats” and “hows” that makes religions into mythologies is often stronger in dead temples than in living.

I failed, he said, I got talking my ideas. It's my greatest failing.

A one sentence definition of mythology? "Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion

In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped

This will end the mythology of the dumb little Dutch boy with his stupid finger in the dike to save his country.

The picture of the bacchante who stands motionless and stares into space must have been well known. Catullus is thinking of her when he tells of the abandoned Ariadne, who follows her faithless lover with sorrowing eyes as she stands on the reedy shore ‘like the picture of a maenad.’ Indeed, melancholy silence becomes the sign of women who are possessed by Dionysus. […]
Madness dwells in the surge of clanging, shrieking, and pealing sounds, it dwells also in silence. The women who follow Dionysus get their name, maenads, from this madness. Possessed by it, they rush off, whirl madly in circles, or stand still, as if turned to stone.