Greece Quotes - Page 15

• Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Children, People, Common Sense

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• There remain of Europe, first, Macedonia and the part of Thrace that are contiguous to it and extend as far as Byzantium; secondly, Greece; and thirdly, the Islands that are close by. Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece, yet now, since I am following the nature and shape of the place geographically, I have decided to classify it apart from the rest of Greece and to join it with that part of Thrace.

  Strabo

  Islands, Byzantium, Europe

  "Geographica". Encyclopedia by Strabo, 7 BC.

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• It is childish to assume that science began in Greece; the Greek "miracle" was prepared by millenia of work in Egypt, Mesopotamia and possibly in other regions. Greek science was less an invention than a revival.

  George Sarton

  Egypt, Miracle, Greek

  George Sarton (2012). “Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

  Robert Byron

  Sea, Mountain, Looks

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• I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Believe, Fate, Japan

  Mahatma Gandhi, Judith M. Brown (2008). “The Essential Writings”, p.73, Oxford University Press

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• For me Greece is Maria Farantouri. This is how I imagined Goddess Hera to be: strong, pure and vigilant. I have never encountered any other artist able to give me such a strong sense of the divine.

  Francois Mitterrand

  Strong, Artist, Giving

  "'L'Abeille et l'architecte' ('The Bee and the Architect')". Book by François Mitterrand, 1980.

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• It is now necessary to face the truth and to acknowledge against all prejudices that the struggle that the Albanian tribe is leading today is a natural and unavoidable historic struggle for a different political life than that experienced under Turkish rule - different also from that which its neighbours Serbia, Greece and Montenegro would like to force upon the Albanians.

  Dimitrije Tucovic

  Struggle, Political, Different

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• Few footprints of the great remain in the sand before the ever-flowing tide. Long ago it washed out Homer's. Curiosity follows him in vain; Greece and Asia perplex us with a rival Stratford-upon-Avon. The rank of Aristophanes is only conjectured from his gift to two poor players in Athens. The age made no sign when Shakespeare, its noblest son, passed away.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Son, Player, Greatness

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• Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

  Andrei Gromyko

  Country, Turkeys, Symphony

  New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1953.

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• In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome.

  Isaac Watts

  Bible, Jobs, Rome

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• Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Morning, Land, Greek

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869). “Oldtown Folks”, p.219

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• Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled.

  Lucretius

  Men, Long, Atheism

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• The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome.

  Orestes Brownson

  Art, Philosophy, Ideas

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• It takes more to make one sage today than it did to make the seven of Greece. And you need more resources to deal with a single person these days than with an entire nation in times past.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Art, Philosophy, Past

  "Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia". Book by Baltasar Gracián, § 1, 1647.

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• 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, Greek

  "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.

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• Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that "It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece.

  Plutarch

  Cities, Gold, May

  Plutarch (2012). “Parallel Lives - Complete”, p.349, Simon and Schuster

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• English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included,--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wildness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not the wild man in her, became extinct.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Animal, Men, Lakes

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Civil Disobedience & Other Essays - Premium Collection: 26 Political, Philosophical & Historical Essays: Slavery in Massachusetts, Life Without Principle, The Landlord, Walking, Sir Walter Raleigh, Paradise (to be) Regained, Herald of Freedom, A Plea for Captain John Brown, The Highland Light, Dark Ages…”, p.167, e-artnow

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• In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.118, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.

  Homer

  Lying, Two, Together

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• I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.

  Socrates

  History, Citizens, World

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• Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.

  Homer

  Daughter, Men, Feet

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• Millions of Americans are standing up and saying, 'We want our country back!' Republicans, Democrats, Independents, will not go down the path of Greece, we will not go quietly into the night.

  Ted Cruz

  Country, Night, Want

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• The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.

  Jesse Owens

  Country, New York, Cities

  "People In America : Jesse Owens" by Barbara Dash, web.archive.org. June 7, 2002.

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• Books are special, books are the way we talk to generations that have not turned up yet. The fact that we can actually, essentially communicate with the people in ancient Egypt, people in Rome and Greece, people in ancient Britain, people in New York in the 1920s who can communicate to us and change the way we think, and change the things that we believe. I think that books are special. Books are sacred. And I think that when you are selling books, you have to remember that in all the profits and loss, in all of that, you are treading on sacred ground.

  Neil Gaiman

  New York, Believe, Book

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• And now for the vapor-bath: on a framework of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woolen cloth, taking care to get the joints as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they put a dish with red-hot stones in it. Then they take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed on to the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Sythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure. This is their substitute for an ordinary bath in water, which they never use.

  Herodotus

  War, Water, Giving

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