Origins of Vampire Beliefs
Commentators have offered many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs, trying to explain the superstition – and sometimes mass hysteria – caused by vampires. Everything ranging from premature burial to the early ignorance of the body's decomposition cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.
Read more about this topic: Vampire
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins, vampire and/or beliefs:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weedsand one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (18951990)
“I am the wound and the knife!
I am the slap and the cheek!
I am the limbs and the rack,
And the victim and the executioner!
I am the vampire of my own heart.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)