Pheidias Quotes

Take notice, Pheidias, that you are human yourself, and that the wretched man is also human, in order that you may not covet what's beyond you. But when you say that you suffer from insomnia, you'll know the cause if you'll examine yourself what man you are. You take a stroll in the market-place; you come in forthwith; if your two legs are tired you take a luxurious bath; you rise up and eat greedily at pleasure; your life itself is a sleep. In fine, you have no ill; your disease is luxury through which you have passed - but something rather hackneyed, my young master, occurs to me - please excuse me - as the saying goes, you know, you are so crowded by your blessings, know it well, that you have no room to defecate. (Menander)

I felt myself in the presence of something enormously big, as if a small barbarian was desecrating the colossal Zeus of Pheidias with a coal hammer. But I also felt it inhuman, and I hated it, and I clung to that hatred. "You fear nothing and you believe nothing," I said. "Man, you should never have been allowed to live."

John Buchan