Ancient Quotes - Page 16

• If we admit instrumental musick in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews?—yea, dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions? or, how can we decline a whole rabble of church-officers, necessary to be introduced for instrumental musick, whereof our Lord Jesus Christ hath left us no manner of direction?

  Cotton Mather

  Jesus, Dancing, Church

  Cotton Mather (1820). “Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from Its First Planting in the Year 1620, Unto the Year of Our Lord, 1698”, p.228

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• Tentatively I stood a great lump of wood on the chopping block and bought the axe down on it. It flew into two perfect halves. Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing Respect and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition, almost crying with jubilation – not just about the wood, but because I could live competently some of the time, and because that day I liked myself.

  Helen Garner

  Block, Two, Perfect

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• The Dreyfus Affair is an exceptional case. It's true that here and there you can find some dregs of anti-Semitism, but the situation is the same in every country. After all, you're not exactly a nation like all the other nations. You are unique, if only because you are such an ancient people, and because of the way you are spread all over the world and your obvious success in many fields. But, in all honesty, anti-Semitism in France has always remained on a minimal level, at the verbal level only. It never went as far as pogroms.

  Jean-Marie Le Pen

  Country, Honesty, Unique

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• Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

  Charles Dickens

  Christmas, Honesty, Hands

  Charles Dickens (1873). “The Works of Charles Dickens”, p.162

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• Even during the period when Rome lost much of her ancient prestige, an Indian traveler observed that trade all over the world was operated with the aid of Roman gold coins which were accepted and admired everywhere.

  Paul Einzig

  Rome, Gold, Coins

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• For the May Day is the great day,
  Sung along the old straight track.
  And those who ancient lines did ley
  Will heed this song that calls them back...
  Pass the cup, and pass the Lady,
  And pass the plate to all who hunger,
  Pass the wit of ancient wisdom,
  Pass the cup of crimson wonder.

  Jethro Tull

  Song, Track, Great Day

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• I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste.

  Georges Bizet

  Christian, Religious, Taken

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• The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Mother, Views, Names

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• Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.

  Fritjof Capra

  Beautiful, Religious, Art

  "The Tao of Physics". Book by Fritjof Capra, 1975.

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• There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Lying, Kind, Consciousness

  "My View of the World" by Erwin Schrodinger, (Ch, 4), 1961.

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• THE NAME OF THE WIND has everything fantasy readers like, magic and mysteries and ancient evil, but it's also humorous and terrifying and completely believable. As with all the very best books in our field, it's not the fantasy trappings (wonderful as they are) that make this novel so good, but what the author has to say about true, common things, about ambition and failure, art, love, and loss.

  Tad Williams

  Art, Humorous, Book

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• Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.

  Vine Deloria Jr.

  Lying, Responsibility, Animal

  "God Is Red". Book by Vine Deloria Jr., 1973.

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• Wendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy.

  Roberto Calasso

  Sexy, Lying, Identity

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• It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

  Attitude, Race, Self

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• About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America.

  James A. Michener

  Ocean, Years, America

  James A. Michener (1993). “Two complete novels”, Outlet

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• No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before.

  James A. Michener

  Daughter, Passion, Heart

  "Poland". Book by James A. Michener, 1983.

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• This amazing breakthrough full-length revolutionary audio uses a powerful new combination of a subliminal hypnotic induction AND beautiful original music (created with a really cool ancient musical instrument) AND brand-new subliminal clearing commands ALL designed to begin to clear your unconscious blocks of anything and everything in the way of your attracting what you really want – and this incredible one-hour audio does it without any effort at all on your part!

  Joe Vitale

  Beautiful, Powerful, Block

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• The ancient Hebrews had a word for this awareness of the importance of things. They called it kavod. Kavod originally was a business term, referring to the heaviness of something, which was crucial in weights and measures and the maintaining of fairness in transactions. Over time the word began to take on a more figurative meaning, referring to the importance and significance of something.

  Rob Bell

  Weight, Maintaining, Fairness

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• A fruitfly is ancient in 40 days,
  a mouse at 3 years, a horse at 30,
  a man at 100, and some species of
  tortoises not until 150 years.

  Leonard Hayflick

  Horse, Men, Years

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• I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Children, Spring, Thinking

  Richard Rodriguez (2003). “Brown: The Last Discovery of America”, p.9, Penguin

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• In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.

  Cheikh Anta Diop

  Practice, Doubt, Skins

  Cheikh Anta Diop, E. Curtis Alexander, Mwalimu Imara Mwadilifu (1984). “Cheikh Anta Diop: an African scientist : an axiomatic overview of his teachings and thoughts”, Eca Assoc

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• I suppose I felt doomed to be an artist early on because of the way I drew all over the books that I needed for school, from ancient history to math. I was more interested in drawing in the margins than actually doing the work.

  Nancy Spero

  Book, School, Math

  "Art as a Continuum". Art21 Interview, art21.org.

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• I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

  Shirley Jackson

  Stories, Village, Violence

  Shirley Jackson (2008). “The Lottery”, p.22, The Creative Company

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• We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. … Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels - can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate.

  Murray Bookchin

  Spring, Ocean, Journey

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• Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken.

  Garth Nix

  Force

  Garth Nix (2014). “Abhorsen”, p.37, Hot Key Books

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