Greek Quotes - Page 32

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.

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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)

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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

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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, 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.

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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).

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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,

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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,

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Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.

William Kennedy

Paris, Issues, Literature

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I had to marry a Greek; I had to stir up the ethnic pot. Otherwise, my children would have been anemic and sickly. Now theyve got some good Mediterranean blood in them.

Alexandra Wentworth

Children, Blood, Pot

"Ali Wentworth Talks ‘Ali In Wonderland,’ Life With George Stephanopoulos" by Nicki Gostin, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 07, 2012.

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In Greek mythology, the hero wants to be great, but the very concept does not exist in the Indian vocabulary. Yet it has become the global template. And it's a template that won't fit in India.

Devdutt Pattanaik

Hero, Vocabulary, India

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Nobody knows why we're alive; so we all create stories based on our imagination of the world; and as a community, we believe in the same story. In India, every person believes his/ her own mythosphere to be real. Indian thought is obsessed with subjectivity; Greek thought with objectivity.

Devdutt Pattanaik

Real, Believe, Objectivity

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I absolutely believe the past had its share of warrior women who fought like men. Whether some of these were the actual Amazons from Greek myth is another matter.

Anne Fortier

Believe, Warrior, Past

"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and listened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Leopards, Bulls, Lectures

Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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Before the Greeks were the Tamils. The Tamils are one of the oldest civilizations thats still surviving.

M.I.A.

Civilization, Stills, Surviving

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We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.

Bertrand Russell

Philosophy, Expression, Class

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For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa.

Neil MacGregor

Adventure, Museums, Icons

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What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet...

Robert Kennedy

Men, Compassion, Color

Speech the day after the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, April 5, 1968.

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He who enjoys a good neighbor, said the Greeks, has a precious possession. Same goes for neighbour's wife.

Nicolas Bentley

Wife, Precious Possessions, Moral

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The Greeks were the first boxers. Pugilism appears to have been one of the earliest distinctions in play and exercise that appeared between the Hellenes and their Asiatic fathers. The unarmed personal encounter was indicative of a sturdier manhood.

John Boyle O'Reilly

Father, Exercise, Play

John Boyle O'Reilly (1888). “Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport”

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There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.

Michel de Montaigne

Latin, Doubt, Ornaments

Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.128, Stanford University Press

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