Quotes About Alexandria

Alejandría, debelada, imploró en vano la misericordia del César

When I was a boy in Desuq, Egypt, a city on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, about 50 miles east of Alexandria, my family lived steps away from the local landmark, a mosque named for a 13th-century Sufi sheik.

Hamilton] did not reach Alexandria until the afternoon of March 26, and this meant he had barely three weeks in hand. The job that lay before the General was, in effect, nothing less than the setting up of the largest amphibious operation in the whole history of warfare... In fact the only operation that could be compared with this lay thirty years ahead on the beaches of Normandy in the second world war; and the planning of the Normandy landing was to take not three weeks but nearly two years.

Here, in Egypt, the morning of Alexander's adventure ends. Henceforth he is divided; Alexandria is his first possession and he is no longer free.

Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool?

Napoleon's plan was for his army to arrive in Egypt not as conquerors but liberators. Landing in Aboukir Bay on July 1, 1798, the French captured Alexandria the next day, overcoming the surprised Mamelukes - the despotic local rulers - with a combination of modern artillery and infantry tactics.

How do you spell love in Alexandria?' he said at last, softly. 'That is the question. Sleeplessness, loneliness, bonheur, chagrin -- I do not want to harm or annoy her, but I feel that somehow, somewhere, she must need me as I need her.

I was held in the Mazra Tora Prison for my role as leader of the pan-Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in Alexandria.

in the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria. These include statues of Egyptian gods

Because every ruler celebrated his conquests by setting torch to the nearest library. Did not Julius Caesar incinerate the scrolls in the great library at Alexandria during his campaign against the republicans in Africa? Or General Stilicho, leader of the Vandals, order the burning of the Sybillene prophecies in Rome?

In Alexandria were parks and gardens, palaces, shrines and a zoo. The city was rich in sights to please even the most jaded traveller, and its architecture laid out its cultural and intellectual claims to pre-eminence. The pharaoh-emperor's arrival was the most extraordinary occasion most Egyptians would ever see.

During the reign of the Ptolemies the powerful Egyptian priests were indulged with elaborate temples, but the Greeks also introduced their own cultural spirit and under their aegis fine cities and seats of art and learning had been established. Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, was in the first century, in its amalgam of cultures, a more elegant, civilised and learned metropolis than Rome could conceivably hope to be.

And as his research continued in Syracuse, Archimedes made sure word of what he was doing got back to friends in Alexandria. Among his correspondents was a former Croton pupil named Dositheusa to whom Archimedes would send one major treatise after another that would revolutionize mathematics. There was Quadrature of the Parabola, then two books on Sphere and Cylinder, one on Spiral Lines, and finally a treatise on Conoids and Spheroids.27

It was shortly after arriving in Alexandria that Strato of Lampsacus became King Ptolemy's principal adviser on all matters intellectual and scientific. Over the next several years, he would use that position to create the ancient world's most important research center, Alexandria's Mouseion, or Museum. Just as Alexandria was Aristotle's city, so its Museum would be the centrifuge for spreading Aristotle's methods and ideas across the ancient world.

Strato's arrival in that thriving port city was a landmark event in the history of Greek science. At one stroke Strato was leaving Athens, the ancient city of philosophers, intellectuals, and cosmopolitan aristocrats, for Alexandria, a new city of international businessmen, mathematicians, and engineers.

No other ancient city demonstrated so powerfully Aristotle's assertion that "a difference of capacities among its members enables them to attain a higher and better life by the mutual exchange of their different services." From that point of view alone, Alexandria was already Aristotle's city.

Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years.

The man credited with inventing the comma, colon, and full stop punctuation marks was a librarian of Alexandria called Aristophanes.

Given this appalling social climate, the new Library of Alexandria, built at a cost of $230 million in an attempt to revive its fabled ancient predecessor (and resembling nothing so much as a giant satellite dish), has unsurprisingly failed to ignite a renaissance of scholarly acumen.

Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater.

It was in Alexandria that the circumference of the earth was first measured, the sun fixed at the center of the solar system, the workings of the brain and the pulse illuminated, the foundations of anatomy and physiology established, the definitive editions of Homer produced. It was in Alexandria that Euclid had codified geometry.

Learning was a serious business, involving endless drills, infinite rules, long hours. There was no such thing as a weekend; one studied on all save for festival days, which came with merciful regularity in Alexandria.

It was in Alexandria that the circumference of the earth was first measured, the sun fixed at the center of the solar system, the workings of the brain and the pulse illuminated, the foundations of anatomy and physiology established, the definitive editions of Homer produced.

Until well into the evening, when the vermillion sun plunged precipitously into the harbor, Alexandria remained a swirl of reds and yellows, a swelling kaleidoscope of music, chaos, and color.