Ancient Literature Quotes

• Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.

  Hermann Hesse

  Wise, Squares, Games

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• At bottom, textual criticism for virtually all other ancient literature relies on creative conjectures, or imaginative guesses, at reconstructing the wording of the original. Not so with the New Testament.

  Daniel B. Wallace

  Creative, Criticism, Conjecture

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• No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing.

  Elie Wiesel

  Style, Example, Doe

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• I thought it was strange that I was called after a woman who killed herself in ancient literature. You just don't call your kid Dido and send her to school. But it's great for me now. It's just another thing that makes me stand out.

  Dido Armstrong

  School, Kids, Dido

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it.

  Dennis McKinsey

  Jesus, Real, Believe

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• There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

  F. F. Bruce

  World, Body, Wealth

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• ...a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Religious, Science, Men

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British Poets”, p.205

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• Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.

  Matthew Arnold

  Want, Sanity, Virtue

  Matthew Arnold, Robert Henry Super (1960). “On the Classical Tradition”, p.17, University of Michigan Press

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• We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Real, Land

  "Religion Reason Debate". Video, C-SPAN.Org, January 25, 2007.

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