Quotes About Ancient

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.

The Shroud was old, and regarded as special, and people believed in it. That could be enough to give it a kind of power, all by itself.

Writing is one of the most ancient forms of prayer. To write is to believe communication is possible that other people are good, that you can awaken their generosity and their desire to do better.

Seaford goes so far as to suggest that the money economy influenced Platonic and Aristotelian notions of the individual.

The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt.

But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Where is your ancient courage? You were used to say extremities was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating.

A very ancient and fish-like smell.

There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

Where's my serpent of old Nile?

Every part about you blasted with antiquity.

Etymologically, the word time comes from tide—an ancient reference to the lunar cycle still retained in such expressions as "yuletide" and "good tidings.

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

The shadows of twilight grow, And the tiger's ancient fierceness In my veins begins to flow.

Great God! I'd rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

The badlands, the place where the earth itself was misshapen, where the gods had destroyed the ancient animals and hurled their bones into the earth.

Bare empty space is a relative new conception — one that would be alien, unfamiliar, and incomprehensible to people of primal and ancient cultures. If we think of these earlier views of space and time as naive, misinformed, and anthropomorphic, we must at least recognize the sense of home, security, and support the earlier conceptions of space gave to those who believed and dwelt in them. We have given up this nourishing quality of space — of our abode — at our peril.

The ancient Greeks thought there was no need to count something that was nothing. And since it was nothing, they held that it was impossible to express it as a figure. So someone had to overcome this reasonable assumption, someone has to figure out how to express nothing as a number. This unknown man from India made nonexistence exist. Extraordinary, don't you think?

So who was it? Who discovered zero?" "An Indian mathematician; we don't know his name. The ancient Greeks thought there was no need to count something that was nothing.

The ancient tea mountains bathed in the setting sunshine. The old tea trees stretching out their ancient branches As if turning their nose to the human world and recalling antiquity.

Ancient history has had far more, not less, impact on our modern lives than recent history has.

You should visit the Palatine. It's at the top of that hill . . ." "I know where the Palatine is, Dexter, I was visiting Rome before you were born." "Yes, who was emperor back then?