Ancient Quotations | Page 5

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

In English the expression 'ancient Greece' includes the meaning of 'finished,' whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet.

I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

One reads thousands of books, of poets, modern and ancient, as one meets thousands of people. What remains of it all is hard to tell.

The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.

The pursuit of knowledge is an intoxicant, a lure that scientists and explorers have known from ancient times; indeed, exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge is part of what has kept our species so adaptive.

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

An ancient custom obtains force of nature.

I should know, for I am Morgaine le Fay, priestess of the Isle of Avalon, where the ancient religion of the Mother Goddess is born.

Medieval and ancient sensibility now dominates our time as acoustic and multisensory awareness displaces the merely visual.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study which did not begin with Pythagoras, and will not end with Einstein, but is the oldest and the youngest of all.

For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.

I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China.

I'm always researching ancient religions, and I was also raised Jehovah's Witness, so that kind of scarred me for life.

Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature.

But that was the trouble with ancient artifacts - no one really knew what they did.

No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.

"What was that technique you were using on those bastards?" "An ancient form called kicking ass."

I'm a big history buff so to walk the streets...the ancient world like that was pretty astounding.

I do love these ancient ruins. We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.

A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a renewed appreciation of the elegance of natural form and a renewed sense of wonder at the variety of the world we inhabit.

An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.

A twinge at the edge of her lips and she continued, the soft, slow lilt of recitation: "Ancient walls that sing the distant hours.

If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.

The medium itself is so expressive and so ancient and each person has their own style they bring to it.

Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.

We're coming into a rebirth of the planet. And some cultures have echoed it, such as the Mayans have echoed that, and it came from the ancient Egyptians.

If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.

The main gist of it is to find the most ancient Beatle music possible. It comes in chronological order through the various other records we made and bring it up to date, up to now. We want to put as many songs on the CD's as possible, to make it of

The devastation of the ancient Christian community in Iraq is well known.

I met a travler from an ancient land.

...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat...

Let the ancient serve the present, let the foreign serve the national; by developing that which has been accomplished one creates something that is new.

There is no new knowledge, all is ancient and infinite

If you start watching the oldies, you're in trouble. I feel ancient if "Grand Hotel" or "The Bride Wore Red" comes on. I have a sneaking regard for "Mildred Pierce", but the others do nothing for me.

I'll suggest that the happiness hypothesis offered by Buddha and the Stoics should be amended: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without. We need the guidance of both ancient wisdom and modern science to get the balance right.

The very word baptize, however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient church.

The life of the ancient Greeks and Romans has profoundly influenced our own, and yet the ways in which they affect us do not present themselves on the surface of our ordinary experiences.

Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That's an avalanche of data.

The sanctity proceeds out of the belief... that ancient principle where God says "before you were formed in the womb I knew you," and so for the first time in my public life I sought to stand with great compassion for the sanctity of life.

The Roman state stands by ancient customs, and its manhood.

There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are passing - ever more quickly - and that bits are dropping off the ancient frame. But it is nice to be remembered at all.

China, slavishly dedicated to ancient scholars, incapable of generating within herself sufficient rulers to continue, without bloodshed, a nation.

Take her home. And-" "Say nothing- yes, yes, I heard you the first seven hundred times," Myrnin said, much too sharply. "I'm ancient. I'm not deaf.

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown that the ancients did not know everything.

Since ancient times, philosophers have maintained that to strive too hard for one's own happiness is self-defeating.

Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

Every day, the dispensing of existence.... Its face is fierce and distant and ancient.

Set screamed something in Ancient Egyptian. I was fairly sure it wasn’t a compliment. “I will rend your limbs from their sockets!” he shouted. “I will—” “Die?” Carter suggested.

The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.

In ancient times the ritual, mythological and doctrinal aspects of spiritual space were predominant.

Myth is nothing more than ancient gossip.

I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others.

We extol ancient things, regardless of our own times. [Lat., Vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.]

Ancient history is oddly short on incorrect omens.

There is an ancient saying, famous among men, that thou shouldst not judge fully of a man's life before he dieth, whether it should be called blest or wretched.

We couldn't go to the moon on whale oil. We don't have the capacity yet to consider doing such things as harnessing current sunlight. We're burning ancient sunlight in order to get us to where we now are. But it's costly.

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

that's me. ancient history." [Poseidon to Paul]

The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

Hercules,huh? Percy frowned. "That guy was like the Starbucks of Ancient Greece. Everywhere you turn--there he is.

In some parts of the ancient world, the hawk symbolized the sun. Back when I got this, I figured if I always had the sun on me, I wouldn't be afraid of the dark

The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring--thus he erred himself.

Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.

The rich nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the poor.

It is the stars, it is the ancient stars, it is the young and everlasting stars!

I read Mailer's Ancient Evenings with great interest because I was interested in . . . the seven souls structure, which was very helpful to me in Western Lands. And also in Place of Dead Roads. So that's Mailer.

Short isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient Wisdom delighted to convey its precepts, for the regulation of life and manners.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

May princes know then that they begin to lose (their) state at that hour in which they begin to break the laws and those customs and usages that are ancient and under which men have lived for a long time

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.

. . . I would stand, If the night blackened with a coming storm, Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are The ghostly language of the ancient earth, Or make their dim abode in distant winds. Thence did I drink the visionary power; And deem not profitless those fleeting moods Of shadowy exultation: not for this, That they are kindred to our purer mind And intellectual life; but that the soul, Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity. . . .

. . . I would stand,If the night blackened with a coming storm,Beneath some rock, listening to notes that areThe ghostly language of the ancient earth,Or make their dim abode in distant winds.Thence did I drink the visionary power;And deem not profitless those fleeting moodsOf shadowy exultation: not for this,That they are kindred to our purer mindAnd intellectual life; but that the soul,Remembering how she felt, but what she feltRemembering not, retains an obscure senseOf possible sublimity. . . .

It was better to be in chains with friends than in a garden with strangers. [An ancient Persian proverb.] So true, huh?

PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.

THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.

My responsibility is to save Tibet, to protect its ancient cultural heritage.

A very ancient and fish-like smell.

This act is an ancient tale new told; And, in the last repeating, troublesome, Being urged at a time unseasonable.

The older I get, the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first - a process which often reduces the most complex human problems to manageable proportions

A member of the most ancient profession in the world.

But, through the shift of mood and mood, Mine ancient humor saves him whole The cynic devil in his blood That bids him mock his hurrying soul; That bids him flout the Law he makes, That bids him make the Law he flouts, Till, dazed by many doubts, h

The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and most ancient part of human history teaches and in punishment there is so much that is festive!

The Devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore, he keeps so far away from God -- the Devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom

I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, midlife for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter miler, who's son now says, ""Dad, I just can't run the quarter with you anymore unless I bring something to read.

Time makes ancient good uncouth.

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

We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

Truth is not truth merely because it is ancient. Nor is truth necessarily to be regarded with suspicion because it is ancient.

Hear the voice of the Bard! / Who present, past, and future sees; / Whose ears have heard/ The Holy Word / That walked among the ancient trees.