Ancient Quotes - Page 19

• How simple-minded of the Germans to imagine that we British could be cowed by the destruction of our ancient monuments! As though any havoc of the German bombs could possibly equal the things we have done ourselves!

  Osbert Sitwell

  Simple, Bombs, Done

  "Tribune", Quoted by George Orwell, December 31, 1943.

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• This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years. . . . [Footnote: Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie.] . . . I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed.

  Mark Twain

  Morning, Communication, Apology

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• How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!

  William Blake

  Love, Moving, Sound

  William Blake (2005). “Collected Poems”, p.12, Routledge

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• Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step.

  Robert Frenay

  Nature, Ecosystems, Fire

  Robert Frenay (2006). “Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things”, p.32, Macmillan

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• The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Relief, Needs

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.142, Jazzybee Verlag

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• It was by music that the ancient kings gave elegant expression to their joy. By their armies and axes they gave the same to their anger.

  Confucius

  Kings, Anger, Army

  Confucius (1967). “Li Chi: Book of Rites: An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions”

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• In Europe we have the "loss of self" motif clearly illustrated in the whirl dances of the Russians sects of the Molokani in Armenia....All the countries that bordered the Meditteranean in ancient times, and the less remote sections of Asia as well, appear to have had whirl dances.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Country, Loss

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• THE PATH IS exceedingly vast. From ancient times to the present day, even the greatest sages were unable to perceive and comprehend the entire truth; the explanation and teachings of masters and saints express only part of the whole. It is not possible for anyone to speak of such things in their entirety. Just head for the light and heat, learn from the gods, and through the virtue of devoted practice of the Art of Peace, become one with the divine.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Art, Teaching, Practice

  Morihei Ueshiba, John Stevens (2010). “The Art of Peace”, p.183, Shambhala Publications

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• In ancient Greece, politics and the market were not decoupled.

  George Papandreou

  Ancient Greece, Greece

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• Implosion is no invention in the conventional sense, but rather the renaissance of ancient knowledge, lost over the course of time.

  Viktor Schauberger

  Renaissance, Invention, Lost

  Viktor Schauberger, Callum Coats (2000). “The Energy Evolution – Harnessing Free Energy from Nature: Volume 4 of Renowned Environmentalist Viktor Schauberger’s Eco-Technology Series”, p.149, Gill & Macmillan Ltd

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• As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our own human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.

  Julia Cameron

  Song, Art, Moving

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• Terence: nihil humanum alienum a me-"nothing human is alien to me," the greatest expression of ancient megalopsychia or great-souled and cosmopolitan "magnanimity."

  Kenny Smith

  Expression, Soul, Aliens

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• God created music as a common language for all men. It inspires the poets, the composers and the architects. It lures us to search our souls for the meaning of the mysteries described in ancient books.

  Khalil Gibran

  Book, Men, Inspire

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• He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.

  John Dryden

  Book, Men, Soul

  'An Essay of Dramatic Poesy' (1668) on Shakespeare

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• The telling of stories, like singing and praying, would seem to be an almost ceremonial act, an ancient and necessary mode of speech that tends the earthly rootedness of human language. For narrated events always happen somewhere. And for an oral culture, that location is never merely incidental to those occurrences. The events belong, as it were, to the place, and to tell the story of those events is to let the place itself speak through the telling.

  David Abram

  Singing, Events, Culture

  David Abram (2012). “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World”, p.163, Vintage

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• Ancient wisdom and quantum physicists make unlikely bedfellows: In quantum mechanics the observer determines (or even brings into being) what is observed, and so, too, for the Tiwis, who dissolve the distinction between themselves and the cosmos. In quantum physics, subatomic particles influence each other from a distance, and this tallies with the aboriginal view, in which people, animals, rocks, and trees all weave together in the same interwoven fabric.

  Huston Smith

  Distance, Animal, Rocks

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• It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted Strumpets and the lewdest Harlots, to ramble abroad to Plays, to Playhouses; whither no honest, chaste or sober Girls or Women, but only branded Whores and infamous Adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times.

  William Prynne

  Girl, Play, Theatre

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• The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Democracy, Progress, Uniforms

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2015). “Democracy in America: Book One”, p.30, eKitap Projesi

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• We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.

  Winston Churchill

  Civilization, People, Rising

  Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill (1938*). “The Austrian Crisis and British Foreign Policy: Speeches by Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill”

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• 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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• I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, mid-life for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter-miler, whose son now says, "Dad, I just can't run the quarter with you anymore, unless I bring something to read."

  Bill Cosby

  Running, Dad, Son

  Bill Cosby (1987). “Time Flies”

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• The expression of our truth is an ancient action through which we actually discover our place in the world; the true shape of our being and our individuality. It is how we create firm boundaries and allow others to know who we are and what we value.

  John Earle

  Inspirational, Expression, Individuality

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• Where is your ancient courage? You were used to say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Sea, Floating

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1809). “The plays of William Shakespeare: With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators”, p.123

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• I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.

  Roger Caillois

  Memories, Needs, Syntax

  Roger Caillois (1985). “The writing of stones”, Univ of Virginia Pr

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• Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Travel, Journey, Afterlife

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.228, Random House

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