Quotes About Antiquity

This folio never leaves this room, Natalie said, turning from the bureau with a leather folder in her arms. But you have plenty of time. Enjoy it, and when you're done set it back and join us for coffee. I couldn't possibly—it's so old— One of the woman's brow ridges quirked. And only young things need to be touched?

old books -- little tombstones of ideas and history

It is no surprise that the only woman in antiquity who could be the subject of a full-length biography is Cleopatra. Yet, unlike Alexander, whom she rivals as the theme of romance and legend, Cleopatra is known to us through overwhelmingly hostile sources. The reward of the 'good' woman in Rome was likely to be praise in stereotyped phrases; in Athens she won oblivion.

The story of women in antiquity should be told now, not only because it is a legitimate aspect of social history, but because the past illuminates contemporary problems in relationships between men and women. ... It is most significant to note the consistency with which some attitudes toward women and the roles women play in Western society have endured through the centuries.

In vain do   Papists, Mahometans, and other sects, boast of their antiquity, while   they are mere counterfeits of the true, the pure religion.

Those who object to what is new are controlled by the love of what is old.

A little part of my life is built around ancient art.

Aptitud suple antigüedad.

This is the real Ripley, the lover of beauty, inspired by art, by antiquity. He's awed. He's cold. He so much wishes he weren't alone.

Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.

I have a beautiful Hellenistic gold and garnet ring - it's more than 2,200 years old, but it looks very modern.

A gold book, fastened together in the shape of a book by wires of the same metal, had been dug up in the northern part of the state of New York, and along with the book an enormous pair of gold spectacles!

How do you know antiquity was foolish? How do you know the present is wise? Who made it foolish? Who made it wise?

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.

Rich with the spoils of time.

In the old days, even the most inconsequential people were impressive. You don't hear such stories these days, do you?

As once-colonized nations seek to stand on their own, the countries once denuded of their past seek to assert their independent identities through the objects that tie them to it. The demand for restitution is a way to reclaim history, to assert a moral imperative over those who were once overlords. Those countries still in the shadow of more powerful empires seek to claim the symbols of antiquity and colonialism to burnish their own national mythmaking.

Eccola chiesa di Nostra Signora, un edificio antico, con l'adobe annerito dal tempo. Decido di entrarci. Per ragioni sentimentali, non per altro. Non ho mai letto Lenin, ma l'ho sentito citare: la religione è l'oppio dei popoli. Quanto a me, sono ateo: ho letto L' Anticristo e la considero un'opera fondamentale. Credo nel cambiamento dei valori, Signore. La Chiesa deve sparire; è il ricettacolo degli stolti, delle canaglie e delle mezze cartucce.

vellichor n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you'll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

The achievement of late eighth-century scholars was to begin to understand certain of the logical doctrines developed in antiquity, and to bring these into a relation with theology which provided the stimulus for philosophical speculation.

There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.

Over time Ficino, Colet, and their colleagues raised the art of recovering a corrupt text's lost meaning to a science, which they called philology. Cleaning up and clearing up the written works of antiquity became an Italian, and Florentine, specialty, as philology uncovered new or startling meanings in even the most familiar documents

I don't remember which writer of antiquity it is who speaks of an Old Woman-Devil, armed with a double set of teeth, one in her mouth, the other in her sex. . . . What is the meaning of the vulva-with-teeth if not the devouring nonengendering principle of the woman?

This conglomeration of decayed antiquity, collected with the disease of greed, surely invites our charity. It would be better to forget these trumpery ideas, and learn the best of traditions by observing your own functions, and regarding modernity in an unbiased way.10