Greek Quotes - Page 32

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Country, House, Tree

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Julian Hawthorne (2015). “Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of “The Scarlet Letter”, “The House of Seven Gables” and “Twice-Told Tales””, p.225, e-artnow

4 Copy quote

Show source
Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet toits god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.

Havelock Ellis

Running, Art, Latin

Havelock Ellis (1915). “Impressions and comments”

5 Copy quote

Show source
I had the good luck a few years ago to visit the archeological site of Zippori in Israel ... I could see here displayed the Greek culture that Jesus decisively rejected, the same Greek culture that infiltrated the Christian religion soon after his death and has dominated Christianity ever since.

Freeman Dyson

Christian, Jesus, Good Luck

"The Scientist As Rebel". Book by Freeman Dyson, 2006.

5 Copy quote

Show source
The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.

Lord Acton

Philosophy, Light, Political

Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.7, VM eBooks

5 Copy quote

Show source
The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

Alain de Botton

Rewards, Leisure, Satisfaction

"The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

5 Copy quote

Show source
If we accept the Greek's definition of the idiot as an altogether private man, then we must conclude that many American citizens are now idiots. And I should not be surprised, although I don't know, if there were some such idiots even in Germany.

C. Wright Mills

Men, Definitions, Germany

"Structure of Power in America". The British Journal of Sociology, Volume 9, March 1958.

4 Copy quote

Show source
The Greeks got into Troy by trying, my pretties; everything's done by trying.

Theocritus

Trying, Done

Theocritus, Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow (1952). “Theocritus”, p.113, Cambridge University Press

4 Copy quote

Show source
The Berbers belong to a powerful, formidable, and numerous people; a true people like so many others, the world has seen - like the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans.

Ibn Khaldun

Powerful, People, World

"The Berbers". Book by Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, Blackwell Publishing, p. 1, "Kitab al-Ibar", 1997.

132 Copy quote

Show source
When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

John Arbuthnot

Simplicity, Honor, Diction

George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

13 Copy quote

Show source
They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses , with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes , was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia .

Tacitus

Father, Names, Germany

Cornelius Tacitus (1868). “The Agricola and Germany of Tacitus”

17 Copy quote

Show source
A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.

Jonathan Swift

Running, Book, Dupes

7 Copy quote
The space of early Greek cosmology was structured by logos - resonant utterance or word.

Marshall McLuhan

Space, Utterance, Logos

"Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p. 35, 1988.

5 Copy quote

Show source
If I had written King Lear, I would regret it all my life afterwards. Because that work is so big, that its defects show as huge, its monstrous defects, things even minimal in between some scenes and their possible perfection. It's not the sun with spots; it's a broken greek statue.

Fernando Pessoa

Kings, Regret, Broken

"The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.250, 1982.

4 Copy quote

Show source
The power of the Latin classic is in character , that of the Greek is in beauty . Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

Matthew Arnold

Latin, Character, Taught

Schools and Universities on the Continent (1868)

4 Copy quote

Show source
They were the first Westerners. The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery; and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.

Edith Hamilton

Discovery, World, West

Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

4 Copy quote

Show source
Nietzsche inveighs against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks.

Georg Brandes

Believe, Optimism, Historical

"An Essay on the Aristocratic Radicalism of Friedrich Nietzsche". Essay by Georg Brandes (1889), as translated in "Friedrich Nietzsche" by A.G. Chater (p. 21), 1914.

4 Copy quote

Show source
The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the uniformity of their means.

Henry Fuseli

Mean, Simplicity, Climate

1789 Aphorisms on Art, no.148 (published 1831).

8 Copy quote

Show source
Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with Renan's verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.

Julien Benda

Attitude, Men, Intellectual

"Treason of the Intellectuals". Book by Julien Benda, pp. 151-152, 1927.

4 Copy quote

Show source
Greek pederasty honored the erotic magnetism of male adolescence in a way that today brings police to the door. Children are more conscious and perverse than parents like to think.

Camille Paglia

Children, Thinking, Doors

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

10 Copy quote

Show source
In the reign of the Greek Emperor Justinian , and again in the reign of Phocas , the Bishop of Rome obtained some dominion over the Greek Churches, but of no long continuance. His standing dominion was only over the nations of the Western Empire, represented by Daniel's fourth Beast.

Isaac Newton

Rome, Long, Church

Isaac Newton “Observations”, Lulu.com

9 Copy quote

Show source
The monarchy of the Greeks for want of an heir was broken into several kingdoms; four of which, seated to the four winds of heaven, were very eminent. For Ptolemy reigned over Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia ; Antigonus over Syria and the lesser Asia; Lysimachus over Thrace ; and Cassander over Macedon, Greece and Epirus .

Isaac Newton

Egypt, Wind, Broken

Sir Isaac Newton (1999). “Isaac Newton's Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John: A Critical Edition”, Edwin Mellen Press

9 Copy quote

Show source
Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or ceases to be; for nothing comes into being or is destroyed; but all is an aggregation or secretion of preexisting things; so that all becoming might more correctly be called becoming mixed, and all corruption, becoming separate.

Anaxagoras

Might, Becoming, Corruption

"The History of Ancient Philosophy". Book by Heinrich Ritter, translared by Alexander James William Morrison, Volume 1, 1838.

20 Copy quote

Show source
He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad.

Diodorus Siculus

Kings, Musical, Guests

Histories 16.91.5-6,

9 Copy quote

Show source
Such was the end of Philip (II, king of Macedonia) ...He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire among the Hellenes (Greeks), while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.

Diodorus Siculus

Kings, Years, Support

"Histories" by Diodorus Siculus, 16.95.1-2,

67 Copy quote

Show source
It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.

George Bernard Shaw

Children, Latin, Learning

George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.2005, e-artnow

7 Copy quote

Show source

You May Also Like Quotes On:

Philosopher

Ancient Greek

Greek Mythology

Greek Philosopher

Greek Philosophy

Greek God

Greek Myth

Greek Tragedy

Old Greek