Sacred Woods, Groves and Trees in Fiction
J. R. R. Tolkien included many magical trees and woods in his fictional writings which he based on English and Norse mythology. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire features "weirwoods", a fictional tree species that is worshipped, particularly ancient groves holding extra significance. In The Legend of Zelda series there is a location called the Sacred Grove in Hyrule, usually depicted as a gateway to the Temple of Time and thus the Sacred Realm, one of the most important locations in the series' backstory.
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Famous quotes containing the words sacred, groves, trees and/or fiction:
“For them it’s out-of-date and outmoded to perform miracles; teaching the people is too like hard work, interpreting the holy scriptures is for schoolmen and praying is a waste of time; to shed tears is weak and womanish, to be needy is degrading; to suffer defeat is a disgrace and hardly fitting for one who scarcely permits the greatest of kings to kiss the toes of his sacred feet; and finally, death is an unattractive prospect, and dying on a cross would be an ignominious end.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If someone were to think that trees are made to support the sky, they would all seem too short.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)