"Apokolips was a presumed myth, Element Lad — a planet devoted to evil and destruction, inhabited by super-beings — and with no evidence in History since the twentieth century to support the convention that it ever existed."
— Brainiac 5, The Great Darkness Saga
So did the legend wax and wane and wax some more across the ages until, inevitably, the career of Kal-El, the waif from a lost world, passed from the realm of legend into myth...
Thom began to recite a tale in High Chant, so flowery it was difficult to recognize the story of Kirukan, the beautiful soldier queen of the Trolloc Wars.
"She had a temper like a boar caught in briars at the best," Birgitte said softly to no one in particular. "Not at all like anyone close by."
— The Wheel of Time: The Fires of Heaven
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
— The opening of each The Wheel of Time book
When is a legend legend? Why is a myth a myth? How old and disused must a fact be for it to be relegated to the category "Fairy-tale"? And why do certain facts remain incontrovertible while others lose their validity to assume a shabby, unstable character?
— The opening of Dragonflight
The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright says, it 'brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.' Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.
— Princess Anna Komnene, The Alexiad
