Quotes About Ancient

The loss of so many ancient books could be blamed on something more than the apathy of feudal lords and the negligence and greed of unscrupulous monks. It could be blamed, too, on circumstances beyond the inevitable and indiscriminate destruction of floods and fires, or the pernicious appetites of mice, warble flies, and bookworms. All these things played their part, but there was another reason so few texts survived, and that was technology: how books were made.

For a Latin work from ancient Rome to survive the next few centuries and beyond, it therefore needed to be transferred to parchment. But this conversion from roll to codex was reliant on the early Christians—the people who made the codices—deeming the writings of their pagan predecessors worthy of preservation and study.

He quoted Saint Jerome's praise that learned men were like stars in the heavens, and the prophet Daniel's that they shine like the sun. "All evil is born from ignorance," he wrote. "Yet writers have illuminated the world, chasing away the darkness, especially those authors from ancient times."35

Heh is a formless god and is the depiction of infinity and eternity. He is one of the oldest Egyptian gods and is also the god of time and long life.

introduced school songs, patriotic holidays, and nationalistic themes in textbooks, all of which made an ancient love of Iran into a modern nationalism.

The bridge between the words glamour and grammar is magic. According to the OED, glamour evolved through an ancient association between learning and enchantment.

Unfortunately our old reptilian brain didn't get absorbed, it's still in there squashed with the newer models, like a relative you can't get rid of. This ancient brain, developed about 400 million years ago, is called the brain stem; it is the 'duh' part of the brain. It prompts us to mate, kill and eat, which is perfect if you're living in a field or working at Goldman Sachs.

America isn't young, you know. It's ancient and evil. With aluminum siding.

In ancient Rome, money was minted in the temple of Juno Moneta, the Great Mother in her aspect of adviser and admonisher. She is the source of our words money and monetary.

The term "dialectic" has its origins in ancient Greece. It was seen as a special process of dialogue whereby opposing views or opinions could be reconciled with each other to establish the truth.

But Palestine was derived from the name "Philistine," the people who were constantly at war with the ancient Israelites.

Time is different in an ancient place. Not slower, but somehow bigger, perhaps less transient.

Babylonians used 60 as their base (which remains with us today when we talk about each hour having 60 minutes and each circle having 360 degrees; see Section 4) and

Based on the considerations of history, ancient history, and international axioms, the logic of following up a citizen with his shadow for the purpose of the demarcation of political frontiers of any state has been discounted for international conventions. For example the Arabs cannot ask Spain just because they were there some time in the past nor can they ask for any other area outside the frontiers of the Arab homeland

The Roman religion was in fact of the nature of a bargain: men paid certain sacrifices and rites, and the gods granted their favour, irrespective of right or wrong. In

There were under the early empire two rival schools which practically divided the field between them, Stoicism and Epicureanism.

and the end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most ancient city and polity.

Christians also speak of the Bible as the revelation of God, indeed as the "Word of God." Yet orthodox Christian theology from ancient times has affirmed that the decisive revelation of God is Jesus. The Bible is "the Word" become words, God's revelation in human words; Jesus is "the Word" become flesh, God's revelation in a human life. Thus Jesus is more decisive than the Bible.

One scenario begins by imagining that Jesus heals somebody in a village. What is the likely response, beyond amazement and gratitude? He (and those with him) would be invited to a meal. It is the classic ancient way of expressing gratitude and hospitality.

The recognition that the Bible contains both history and metaphor has an immediate implication: the ancient communities that produced the Bible often metaphorized their history. Indeed, this is the way they invested their stories with meaning. But we, especially in the modern period, have often historicized their metaphors.

The explicit description of the Bible as inerrant and infallible by fundamentalists and some conservative-evangelicals cannot claim to be the ancient and traditional voice of the church.

Thus any and every claim about what a passage of scripture means involves interpretation. There is no such thing as a noninterpretive reading of the Bible, unless our reading consists simply of making sounds in the air. As we read the Bible, then, we should ask not, "What is God saying?" but "What is the ancient author or community saying?"11

Thus the authority of the Bible is its status as our primary ancient conversational partner.

its underlying principles are in such close harmony with the absolute and eternal right that they can never become obsolete. At the same time, the division and arrangement of the treatise give it, so far as I know, the precedence over all other ethical treatises ancient or modern.