Ancient Quotes - page 52

There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad. (Sophocles)
But grant to kings and courts their ancient play, Recall their splendour and revive their sway; Can all your cant and all your cries persuade One power to join you in your wild crusade? In vain ye search to earth's remotest end; No court can aid you, and no king defend. View quote
Joel Barlow
Lyndsay, with all his ancient coarseness...maintained for two centuries, even among the precise, his position as the popular poet of Scotland. View quote
David Lyndsay
Only the truth and its expression can establish that new public opinion which will reform the ancient obsolete and pernicious order of life; and yet we not only do not express the truth we know, but often even distinctly give expression to what we ourselves regard as false. If only free men would not rely on that which has no power, and is always fettered upon external aids; but would trust in that which is always powerful and free the truth and its expression! View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. View quote
Mark Twain
This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years.... Footnote Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie. ... I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed. View quote
Mark Twain
On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one." View quote
R. S. Thomas
Many similar views were also expressed in the Sanskrit Commission Report written under the Nehru government in the 1950s. That report declares: "The State in ancient India, it must be specially pointed out, freely patronised education establishments, but left them to develop on their own lines, without any interference or control. It says that until the British disruption, the salient features of our traditional education included: 'oral instruction, insistence on moral discipline and character-building, freedom in the matter of the courses of study, absence of extraneous control...' ... We can never insist too strongly on this signal fact that Sanskrit has been the Great Unifying Force of India, and that India with its nearly 400 millions of people is One Country, and not half a dozen or more countries, only because of Sanskrit.' View quote
Rajiv Malhotra
Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was. View quote
Ransom Riggs
Nineteenth-century California rewarded only a few of its brotherhood, but it rewarded them as deliriously as an ancient king in an ancient myth would reward. View quote
Richard Rodriguez
All the history, artwork, ancient documents, and secret rituals in the novel are accurate...as are the hidden codes revealed in some of Da Vinci's most famous paintings. (Dan Brown)
Ancient Indians had a far deeper confidence in living speech than in the moral, impersonal and derivative written communication. When words issued from the mouth of a sayer, they carried a personal endorsement. View quote
Robert T. Oliver
Though the ancient world understood that work was a curse, modern industrial society spreads its gospel. The working class, Lafargue hopelessly hoped, must reject the work fetish. View quote
Russell Jacoby
The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it. View quote
Samuel Laman Blanchard
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part. View quote
Richard Stallman
You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country's course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time -- not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals. View quote
Barack Obama
It seemed as if the forces of progress were on the march, that they were inexorable. Each step he took, you felt this is the moment when the old structures of violence and repression and ancient hatreds that had so long stunted people's lives and confined the human spirit – that all that was crumbling before our eyes. View quote
Barack Obama
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work. View quote
Leonardo da Vinci
What do you believe was on the mind of the ancient Romans that they called the arts of speaking humanity? View quote
Philipp Melanchthon
I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world, I am circling around God, around ancient towers and i have been circling for a thousand years. And I still dont know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song. View quote
Rainer Maria Rilke
Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government. (Edith Hamilton)
We can understand Greek religion because, it operates on the same internal dynamic that fuels all (or certainly almost all) religion. The aboriginal Christian prayer Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) is a Greek prayer far more ancient than Christianity. View quote
Thomas Cahill
When Donald Rumsfeld, a practical imperialist if ever there was one, took over the Pentagon, he commissioned a study of how ancient empires maintained their hegemony. Might he more profitably study how they lost all they had gained? View quote
Thomas Cahill
To be without music was, for the ancient Greeks, to be already dead... Ancient Greece was a culture of song. View quote
Thomas Cahill
We are going to Iraq to liberate and not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people - and the only flag that will be shown in that ancient land will be their own. Show respect for them. View quote
Tim Collins