Quotes About Antiquity

sightseeing, an activity that delights the truly idle because it seems so much like scholarship, gawping and eavesdropping on antiquity, flattering oneself with the notion that one is discovering the past when really one is inventing it, using a guidebook as a scenario of swift notations.

after the ancient ondul fashion.

No one can understand history without continually relating the long periods which are constantly mentioned to the experiences of our own short lives. Five years is a lot. Twenty years is the horizon to most people. Fifty years is antiquity. To understand how the impact of destiny fell upon any generation of men one must first imagine their position and then apply the time-scale of our own lives.

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.

Yo hago aquí el papel para ustedes de una válvula de escape de la vida aniquiladora de la burguesía de clase media. Sé que da miedo salir de uno mismo, pero todo lo que es nuevo asusta. Aunque la muchacha anónima de la historia sea tan antigua que podría ser una figura bíblica. Ella era subterránea y nunca había florecido. Miento: ella era hierba.

the people were steeped in the crepuscular gloom of antiquity; and were wise with all manner of accumulated lore; and were subtle in the practice of strange refinements, of erudite perversities, of all that can shroud with artful opulence and grace and variety the bare uncouth cadaver of life, or hide from mortal vision the leering skull of death.

Sokrates' wife, Xanthippe, had in antiquity a reputation as a shrew - but being married to such a man would have tried anyone's patience, and the evidence is not conclusive.

They have been witnessing miracles at Thetford for three hundred years, ever since they turned up a cache of relics, neatly labelled, that included rocks from Mount Calvary, part of Our Lady's sepulchre, and fragments of the manger in which the child Jesus was laid. Now comes the greatest miracle of all, Thomas Cromwell, the Putney boy: who holds that the passage of time does not add lustre to fakes, and that there is no need to reverence a lie because of its antiquity.

One of the beautiful parts about Hamilton is it takes these figures that we've always revered as figures of antiquity and there's real blood flowing through their veins. There's real conflict. There's real life.

The telephone is an antiquity - you never know who is calling, there is no image, it is an outmoded product which constantly disrupts work.

La antigüedad no es lo mismo que el interés histórico —dijo—. De lo contrario, nosotros dos seríamos más interesantes de lo que somos.

The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.

The Romans' contribution to science was mostly limited to butchering antiquity's greatest mathematician, burning the Library of Alexandria, and slowly stifling the sciences that flourished in the colonies of their Empire.

A praiser of past time.

The first two rooms were in the same state as the corridor. Dirty, and piled with junk. Dead typewriters, telephones, three-legged chairs. I was reflecting on the fact that there is nothing in any of the world's great museums that looks quite as ancient as a ten-year-old photocopier, when I heard a noise.

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

Unstrained, I sit and gaze, glare, survey, stare through barred windows encased in embroidered steel. Pearly frosted dust obstructs the channels of light, leaving only small pillars of fire, arranged in disordered fragments. The antiquated sallow walls are stained with crimson braids that wreathe and scuttle about the rimes and rifts.

Like steampunk, silkpunk is a blend of science fiction and fantasy. But while steampunk takes its inspiration from the chrome-brass-glass technology aesthetic of the Victorian era, silkpunk draws inspiration from East Asian antiquity.

The days of recording family births, deaths and marriages in the family Bible were far distant.

Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience -- a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.

Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

I discarded jars of dried snails; OIL OF EARTHWORMS—which appeared to be exactly that; VINUM MILLEPEDATUM—millipedes, these crushed to pieces and soaked in wine; POWDER OF EYGYPTIANE MUMMIE—an indeterminate-looking dust, whose origin I thought more likely a silty streambank than a pharaoh's tomb; PIGEONS BLOOD, ant eggs, a number of dried toads painstakingly packed in moss, and HUMAN SKULL, POWDERED. Whose? I wondered.

I'm attracted to the past.

Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind.