Greek Quotes - Page 16

• Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Gentleman, Stamps

  'Major Barbara' (1907) act 1

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• America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his.

  Arthur Goldberg

  War, Fighting, Winning

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• The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.

  Walter Bagehot

  Hair, Lips, Cold

  Walter Bagehot (1879). “Literary studies, ed. by R.H. Hutton”

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• Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

  Camille Paglia

  Egypt, Order, Balance

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• Envy is what makes you, when an acquaintance is lustily telling you that she's dating a Greek god of a guy, ask, 'Which one, Hades?'

  Gina Barreca

  Envy, Dating, Guy

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• Creative people... are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of 'divine madness,' to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks.

  Rollo May

  People, Creative, Anxiety

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• Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Latin, Musical, Use

  Marcus VITRUVIUS POLLIO, Joseph GWILT (1826). “The Architecture of M. Vitruvius Pollio in Ten Books, Translated from the Latin by J. Gwilt”, p.134

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• Although I was four years at the University [of Wisconsin], I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and and geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have stayed longer.

  John Muir

  Latin, Science, Years

  John Muir (2006). “Essential Muir”, Heyday

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• Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Pain, Age, Library

  John Greenleaf Whittier (2012). “Personal Poems, Complete Volume IV., the Works of Whittier: Personal Poems”, p.162, tredition

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• I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown.

  Bayard Taylor

  Beautiful, Eye, Hands

  Bayard Taylor (1855). “The Lands of the Saracen: Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain”, p.154

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• The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things" - as Swift most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light."

  Matthew Arnold

  Book, Character, Light

  "Culture and Anarchy". Book by Matthew Arnold, 1869.

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• Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it.

  Michael Shermer

  Writing, Grandmother, Thinking

  Michael Shermer (2002). “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time”, p.251, Holt Paperbacks

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• Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former - although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Thinking

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.44, Cambridge University Press

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• The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy... and also a prolific author.

  Nevill Drury

  Philosophy, Teaching, Buddhism

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• Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

  Peter Lynch

  Horse, Wall, Thinking

  Peter Lynch (2012). “One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• Negativland through rose colored glasses. If 'mice are from Mars,' Greek Buck is from Venus.

  Terre Thaemlitz

  Glasses, Rose, Mars

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• My favorite power food is Greek yogurt and honey.

  Misty May-Treanor

  Greek Yogurt, Honey, My Favorite

  "Olympic appetites: how 8 top athletes eat to win" by Michelle Edelbaum, www.eatingwell.com. July 10, 2012.

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• We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.

  Donald Kagan

  Degrees, Certain, Areas

  Interview with Bruce Cole, www.neh.gov. May/June 2005.

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• The Patriarch Joseph, after agreeing with the Latins that their formula of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Son meant the same as the Greek formula of the Holy Ghost proceeding through the Son, fell ill and died. An unkind scholar remarked that after muddling his prepositions what else could he decently do?

  Steven Runciman

  Latin, Son, Ghost

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• By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. . . . I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat.

  Winston Churchill

  Clever, Latin, Learning

  My Early Life ch. 2 (1930)

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• If you see a wonderful archaic Greek marble object in a museum, it's not only that it's beautiful, but what comes to your mind is the fact that it's 2,600 or so years old, and it was done by a human being at that time who you have such a limited ability to grasp - and yet you have this enormous ability to grasp.

  Michael Steinhardt

  Beautiful, Museums, Years

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• And, of course, it must be asked: is it proper to transact with the Turks for the most reassured of Greek possessions when Greece is under Turkish invasion and subjugation?

  Melina Mercouri

  Invasion, Subjugation, Turkish

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• Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Latin, Ignorant, Agnostic

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• The bicycle had, and still has, a humane, almost classical moderation in the kind of pleasure it offers. It is the kind of machine that a Hellenistic Greek might have invented and ridden. It does no violence to our normal reactions: It does not pretend to free us from our normal environment.

  J. B. Jackson

  Cycling, Violence, Normal

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• I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.

  Joseph Addison

  Latin, Mets, Passages

  Joseph Addison (1868). “The Works of Joseph Addison: Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.437

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