Quotes About Greeks

Today we know that there are other solar systems only tens of light years away. Had the Golden Age continued unabated, we might by now have sent probes exploring them. We might have landed on the moon in the year 969 instead of 1969. We might have an understanding of space and life that is unimaginable to us today. Instead, events occurred that would delay the progress begun by the Greeks by a millennium.

The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the uniformity of their means.

I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy.

Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.

Die Athener haben die Unschuld des Herzens und das köstlichste Gut der Griechen, die innere Zeitlosigkeit, verloren. »Ihre einzige Weisheit ist, jeden Zustand zu überholen und fortzuschreiten«, beschimpft Aristophanes sie, Griechenlands Bernard Shaw. Damit ist das ominöse Wort gefallen für das Narkotikum, an das sich seitdem alle ziellos und ruhelos gewordenen Völker klammern: Fortschritt.

Who ever desires what is not gone? No one. The Greeks were clear on this. They invented eros to express it.

But if Diana hath wished to receive my body, shall I, being mortal, become an opponent to the Goddess! But it can not be. I give my body for Greece. Sacrifice it, and sack Troy. For this for a long time will be my memorial, and this my children, my wedding, and my glory. But it is meet that Greeks should rule over barbarians, O mother, but not barbarians over Greeks, for the one is slavish, but the others are free.

In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom.

Their (the Greeks)encounters with foreign were not coloured by the belief that such people's religion was false and inferior, the belief that thinges Christians, Muslims, Hindus or atheist nowadays

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.

Los griegos decían que el asombro es el principio del conocimiento, y si dejamos de asombrarnos corremos el riesgo de dejar de conocer.

The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.

There is nothing particularly classical about a faun: it is only that the Greeks and Italians have ever had the sharpest eyes. You will find him in the "Tempest" and the "Benedicite;" and any country which has beech clumps and sloping grass and very clear streams may reasonably produce him.

The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.

Hatred, Omeir sees, is contagious, spreading through the ranks like a disease. Already, three weeks into the siege, some of the men fight no longer for God or the sultan or plunder but out of a fearful rage. Kill them all. Get this over with. Sometimes the anger flares inside Omeir too, and he wants nothing more than for God to plunge a fiery fist through the sky, and start crushing buildings one after the next until all the Greeks are dead, and he can go home.

Greeks were a religious people and there is little reason to suppose that the priests at Delphi were regularly guilty of conscious deceit or fakery.

As Cicero drily put it: "We must apply to our fellow-countrymen for virtue, but for our culture to the Greeks.

Sicily: A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to Cosa Nostra by John Julius Norwich

A lot of people don't know that my background is completely classical. For a while there, I was all about Moliere and the Greeks and Brecht and Tennessee Williams.

While the willingness of the ancient Greeks to sacrifice their lives for glory brings tears to my eyes, I cannot ultimately condone the choice of Achilles.

I think the history of the world suggests if one studies the Romans, and one studies the early Greeks, and one studies the history of the world, they all eventually falter if they don't come back to the basic aspect of integrity and honor and feelings of love one for another.

The theatre, our theatre, comes from the Greeks.

which has given Greeks their preeminent place in the modern world of shipping today