Ancient Quotes - Page 35

• Like lots of baby boomers, I was brought up on archaic anthropomorphism. Upstanding Christian dogs. Rabbits with family values. Because the ancient texts and pictures were sacred - Potter, Milne and the rest. Even concerned parents who knew Freud and Jung never saw the contradictions in feeding us on them.

  Peter York

  Christian, Baby, Dog

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• Wales was in ancient times divided into three parts nearly equal, consideration having been paid, in this division, more to the value than to the just quantity or proportion of territory.

  Gerald of Wales

  Three, Division, Territory

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• I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry.

  Erland Josephson

  Expression, Class, Skills

  "Erland Josephson obituary" by Ronald Bergan, www.theguardian.com. February 26, 2012.

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• The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Civilization, May, Temples

  First Inaugural Address, Delivered 4 March 1933

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• Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.

  William Butler Yeats

  Rain, Eye, Blue

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.95, Library of Alexandria

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• Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, in that case, to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Writing, Church, Important

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• Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a wise and intuitive counselor available 24/7? You're in luck-you already have one. Your body! Our bodies carry ancient wisdom. We literally live within a temple of intuitive and instinctive wisdom. Sometimes we pay attention and access body wisdom; but unfortunately, the aphorism "Mrs. Smith lived a short distance from her body" is sadly true for many of us.

  Sue Thoele

  Wise, Distance, Luck

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• Ancient wisdom offers . . . a simple yet profound formula to guide everyone who leads, anyone who aspires to leadership: 'Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.'

  Wayne D. Dosick

  Leadership, Simple, Profound

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• I've visited the future and I've seen the Heavenly City standing upon this Earth!-Beautiful, gorgeous, incomparable, almost indescribable, the most gorgeous sight you'll ever want to see! A beautiful pyramid-shaped City like the ancient Egyptian pyramids, only much more beautiful!-That Golden City like crystal gold, pyramid-shaped, 1500 miles wide! Think of it! And 1500 miles high!

  David Berg

  Beautiful, Thinking, Pyramids

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• All over the world, there are libraries of a sort. They are among the most beautiful places on the earth, and they hold more information than the Library of Congress. Within these libraries are millions of books, each a uniques masterpiece to see and touch. They are teaching this language to scientists. However, so far only one percent of the books have been deciphered. Some tell how to find new medicines; others reveal new things to eat... These treasure houses of knowledge are the ancient forests of our planet.

  Brock Adams

  Beautiful, Teaching, Book

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• If ever you come upon a grove of ancient trees which have grown to an exceptional height, shutting out a view of sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.

  Seneca the Younger

  Space, Views, Sky

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• In the ancient recipe, the three antidotes for dullness or boredom are sleep, drink, and travel. It is rather feeble. From sleep you wake up, from drink you become sober, and from travel you come home again. And then where are you? No, the two sovereign remedies for dullness are love or a crusade.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Home, Sleep, Two

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.9406, Delphi Classics

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• Life is short - while we speak it flies; enjoy, then, the present, and forget the future; such is the moral of ancient poetry, a graceful and a wise moral - indulged beneath a southern sky, and all deserving, the phrase applied to it - the philosophy of the garden.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Life, Wise, Philosophy

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• Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd and under roofs That our frail hands have raised?

  William C. Bryant

  Hands, Years, World

  William Cullen Bryant, “A Forest Hymn”

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• Even the standard example of ancient nonsense - the debate about angels on pinheads - makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Angel, Numbers, House

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

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• New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

  James Russell Lowell

  Onward And Upward, Progress, Duty

  'The Present Crisis' (1845)

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• SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug." It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Eggs, Giving, Sacred

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.328, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Father, Latin, Hymns

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2526, Delphi Classics

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• We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one.

  Charles Lamb

  Taste, Remember

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• Friendship exists outside our modern economy of scarcity... It's not about apportioning vanishing resources of time and energy. Friendship is a blessed relic of the ancient economy of the gift, and the time freely given to people dear to you actually creates magical abundance.

  Victor Hugo

  Friendship, Blessed, People

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• It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  House, Ancestry, Masters

  "De Officiis". Treatise by Marcus Tullius Cicero, CXXXIX, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 23-25, 44 B.C..

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• A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ivy, Wife, Ruins

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• Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the 'courage' to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word... I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age.

  Pablo Picasso

  Artist, Age, Today

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• Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown.

  John Keats

  Night, Voice, Bird

  "Ode to a Nightingale" l. 61 (1820)

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• There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."

  Edmund Burke

  Party, Law, Jurisprudence

  Edmund Burke's speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, May 30, 1794.

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