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Delphi Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Delphi.

Delphi Quotes

“It is a testament to Delphi’s unparalleled tenacity and ability to survive that Heliodorus wrote his novel about the love affair at Delphi and about Delphi’s crucial place at the center of a connected Mediterranean society not in the hey-day of the classical world, but in the third or fourth centuries AD, on the cusp of the Mediterranean world’s gradual conversion to Christianity and the end of pagan sanctuaries like the one at Delphi.⁵ And yet, even in this twilight, Delphi’s description glows bright. More tellingly, Heliodorus’s description echoes that of another ancient writer, the geographer Strabo, who labeled Delphi, above all, as a theatron: a theater.⁶ It was a space in which most of the moments that mattered in the history of the ancient world were played out, reflected on, or altered. As a result, an understanding of the ancient world and, I would argue, of humankind itself, is incomplete without an understanding of Delphi.”

Global HistoryDelphiMediterranean World
Book:Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World
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“Our king Apollo, O child of mighty Zeus, when you were born your father gave you a gold headband and a lyre of tortoise shell, and more: a chariot drawn by swans. You were to go to Delphi and the Kastalian springs whose waters are the gift of broad Kephissos, and there deliver justice to the Hellenes through the oracles. But when you seized the reins, you made the swans sail north to the distant land of the Hyperboreans, and though the Delphians begged you to return—with paeans of flutes and circles of women dancing about the tripod— Apollo, you remained to rule that people through the long year. Came the season when the tripod rings loud and clear in Delphi, you turned the swans to Parnassos. It was high noon of summer when you glided back from the far northlands; swallows and nightingales were singing; cicadas also sang about you; silver brooks poured down from Kastalia, and the great river Kephissos threw blue-foaming waves into the bright wind, yes, even the waters knew a god was coming home.”

ApolloWillis BarnstoneDelphiAlkaiosParnassus
Author:Alkaios
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“Merciful heavens, what a view!" We were running along a high white road that hugged the side of Parnassus. Below us to the left, the steep hillside fell away to the valley of the Pleistus, the river that winds down between Parnassus' great flanks and the rounded ridges of Mount Cirphis, towards the plain of Crissa and the sea. All along the Pleistus – at this season a dry white serpent of shingle beds that glittered in the sun – all along its course, filling the valley bottom with the tumbling, whispering green-silver of water, flowed the olive woods; themselves a river, a green-and-silver flood of plumy branches as soft as sea spray, over which the ever-present breezes slid, not as they do over corn, in flying shadows, but in whitening breaths, little gasps that lift and toss the olive crests for all the world like breaking spray. Long pale ripples followed one another down the valley. Where, at the valley's end, Parnassus thrust a sudden buttress of gaunt rock into the flood, the sea of grey trees seemed to break round it, flowing on, flooding out to fill the flat plain beyond, still rippling, still moving with the ceaseless sheen and shadow of flowing water, till in the west the motion was stilled against the flanks of the distant hills and to the south against the sudden sharp bright gleam of the sea.”

Delphi
Book:My Brother Michael
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“All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous "Know thyself" inscribed in the temple of Delphi.”

PeopleKnowsMenDifferentUniverseGivenHigherStandingErrorsCommandTemplesBelongingCentreSageDeafThyselfWisestKnow ThyselfDelphiNot BelongingStanding Apart
Book:On aggression
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“And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima .”

MenMadeSaidBodyMightSpiritTakenEventsFitSpeechMadProphetProphecyCavesMad MenOraclesIntoxicatedVaporGentilesDelphi
Book:Leviathan
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“Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view.”

MenShouldHumansHas BeensSaidIdeasFeelingsMightViewsWindowShould HaveObviousFollowingRelatedBreastsApolloShould Have BeenConcealedWisestUtteranceSagacityPriestessesDelphi
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.”

IfsThinkingWellsArtMomentsMightGroupsConditionsCenturyFiguresTasteGreekCompositionSculptureFragmentsVividAdaptedAntiquesRevulsionDelphi
Book:The nude: a study in ideal form
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“Zagreus was the son of Zeus. He was slain by the Titans, buried at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and rose from the dead as Dionysos. He was the god of fruit and wine. Like those of Christ his most devoted followers were women. He is the beloved son and occupies a throne at the right hand of his father, Zeus. His empty tomb at Delphi was long preserved by his devotees as proof of his death, and resurrection.”

LongHandsFatherChristFeetAtheismSonEmptyWineRoseFruitPositive AtheismProofBelovedFollowersBuriedResurrectionDevotedThronesTombsZeusDevoteeTitansBeloved SonDelphi
Author:John Remsburg
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“It is difficult to see anything but infatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to the action ... that each of us is to rejoice that our several units are to be distinguished at death into countless millions of organisms; for such, it seems, is the latest revelation delivered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi.”

SeemsActionScienceDeathDifficultMillionsModernRevelationsDestructiveFragileRejoiceOrganismsUnitsInfatuationTemperamentDistinguishedTripodsDelphi
Author:William E. Gladstone
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