Ancient Quotes - Page 9

• We're animals, I think we forget that. I think there is an ancient archetypal memory that still exists within us. If we deny that, what is the cost? So I do think it's what binds us as human beings.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Memories, Animal, Thinking

  Terry Tempest Williams (2006). “A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams”, Utah State Univ Pr

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• Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

  John Adams

  Christian, Men, Numbers

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1969). “The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government”

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• Why would so many risk their reputations, families, careers—even presidential legacies—for something that runs against human nature? Were monogamy an ancient, evolved trait characteristic of our species, as the standard narrative insists, these ubiquitous transgressions would be infrequent and such horrible enforcement unnecessary. No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature.

  Christopher Ryan

  Running, Careers, Presidential

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• We should treat each other better. Why in the hell would you still have racism? This ancient, moronic hatred? Why does our foreign policy have to always involve so much death and so much death of innocent people as a matter of course, to the point to where no one bothers to say anything. I guess a lot of people don't want to move forward. It's frustrating at times.

  Henry Rollins

  Moving, Racism, People

  Source: eluxemagazine.com

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• I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England.  And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.

  John Wesley

  Strong, Prayer, Believe

  John Wesley “John Wesley's The Book of Common Prayer”, Lulu.com

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• There's a joy without canker or cark,
  There's a pleasure eternally new,
  'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark
  Of china that's ancient and blue.

  Andrew Lang

  Blue, Joy, Pleasure

  Andrew Lang (2015). “Ballads in Blue China”, p.35, Library of Alexandria

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• Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome.

  Charles Mackay

  Errors, Welcome, Familiar

  Charles Mackay (1841). “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions”, p.314

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• If an ancient man saw planes two thousand years ago He would've thought they were birds Or angels from another world Or messengers from other planets.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Angel, Men, Years

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• If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.

  Lord Byron

  Men, Holy, Tales

  Lord Byron (2015). “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”, p.6, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• O ye by wandering tempest sown
  'Neath every alien star,
  Forget not whence the breath was blown
  That wafted you afar!
  For ye are still her ancient seed
  On younger soil let fall—
  Children of Britain's island-breed,
  To whom the Mother in her need
  Perchance may one day call.

  William Watson

  Mother, Stars, Children

  William Watson, “England And Her Colonies”

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• I see a city in the desert lies
  The vanity of an ancient king
  But the city lies in broken pieces
  While the wind howls and the vultures sing

  Sting

  Kings, Lying, Vanity

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• Ubuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations.

  Allan Boesak

  Philosophy, Fall, Biblical

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

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• To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Together, Age, Empires

  Zbigniew Brzezinski (2007). “The Grand Chessboard”, p.43, Basic Books

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• MEMRI allows an audience far beyond the Arabic-speaking world to observe the wide variety of Arab voices speaking through the media, schoolbooks, and pulpits to their own people. What one hears is often astonishing, sometimes frightening, and always important. Most importantly, it includes the newly-emerging liberal voices of reform and hope, as well as disturbing echoes of ancient hatreds. Without the valuable research of MEMRI, the non-Arabic speaking world would not have this indispensable window.

  Richard Holbrooke

  Echoes, Media, Voice

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• Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself.

  Anne Rice

  Streets Of Paris, Age, Paris Fashion

  Anne Rice (2011). “The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned”, p.246, Ballantine Books

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• I believe that a woman should always remain a woman and nothing feminine should be alien to her. At the same time, I strongly feel that no work done by a woman in the field of science or culture or whatever, however vigorous or demanding, can enter into conflict with her ancient 'wonderful mission' -- to love, to be loved -- and with her craving for the bliss of motherhood.

  Valentina Tereshkova

  Believe, Motherhood, Done

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• Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.

  Aristotle

  Power, Law, Long

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• I have no agenda. I know what I love to do and that's my religion. That's what I recommend to everybody. I did not invent that very ancient idea: "Do what you love and you will never work in your life." It's the pure truth. I think it's also the goal of human existence to accumulate as much of that feeling as possible. You can find that concept in anywhere from yoga to Bible.

  Eugene Hutz

  Yoga, Thinking, Goal

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• The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea.

  Sebastian Barry

  Regret, Struggle, Animal

  Sebastian Barry (2008). “The Secret Scripture”, p.115, Faber & Faber

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• Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief.

  Jennifer Michael Hecht

  Doubt, Different, Belief

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• The art of beautiful motion is far and away the oldest. Before man learned how to use any instruments at all, he moved the most perfect instrument of all, his body. He did this with such abandon that the cultural history of prehistoric and ancient man is, for the most part, nothing but the history of the dance.

  Gerard van der Leeuw

  Beautiful, Dance, Art

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• As everyone knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not consider the dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration, and in ancient times the two antagonistic streams, which one finds throughout in the estimates of dream life, were already noticeable. They distinguished between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead him to destruction.

  Sigmund Freud

  Dream, Inspiration, Two

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• The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Opposites, Culture

  Alfred C. Kinsey (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, p.660, Indiana University Press

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• Truth is, most of us contain a splashing, giggling, squealing child who knows without thinking that bare skin and water go together as wings go with air, roots with earth, and the phoenix with incendiary sun. And innocence belongs to us as it did to ancient Greek athletes, who never wore clothes for their footraces or boxing matches but rather oiled themselves until their nude bodies glistened in the sunlight.

  Janet Lembke

  Children, Athlete, Thinking

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• Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women.

  Camille Paglia

  Stars, Power, Greatness

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.12, Vintage

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