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Greek Quotes

“Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions. [Addressing the dead Hellenes of the Battle of Chaeronea]”

WarDeathUnitedRegretVictoryBattleHappyBitterGreekFightRemorseGreeceRivalryCruel
Author:Alexander the Great
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“There were corporeal, psychic, and spiritual people. Somatics, psychics, and pneumatics, they called them, from the Greek. Equality goes against nature, however rightly one might strive toward it. Some are made of more earthly elements, and those people are thick, sensual, and non-creative. They are only good for listening. Others live with their hearts, their emotions, in bursts of the soul, and others still have contact with the highest spirit, distant from the body, free from affects, spacious inside. It is to this final group that God has access.”

SoulGreekPsychicSomaticCorporealJewish MysticismPneumatic
Book:The Books of Jacob
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“...Originally everything about a Greek or Christian building meant something, and in reference to a higher order of things. This atmosphere of inexhaustible meaningfulness hung about the building like a magic veil. Beauty entered the system only secondarily, impairing the basic feeling of uncanny sublimity, of sanctification by magic or the gods' nearness. At the most, beauty tempered the dread - but this dread was the prerequisite everywhere. What does the beauty of a building mean to us now? The same as the beautiful face of a mindless woman: something masklike.”

GodChristianReligionValuesMagicArchitectureGreekModernityBuildings
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“«Perché quella piccola voce ostinata nella nostra testa ci tormenta così?» disse , guardandoci. «Forse perché ci ricorda che siamo vivi, che siamo mortali, che abbiamo anime autonome - che, dopotutto, siamo troppo pavidi per cedere, ma che pure ci procurano un grave malessere? È una cosa terribile imparare da bambini che si è un essere separato dal resto del mondo, che niente e nessuno soffre i nostri medesimi solori di scottature alla lingua o di sbucciature alle ginocchia: che ognuno è solo con i propri acciacchi e le proprie pene, Ancor più terribile, invecchiando, scoprire che nessuna persona - non importa quanto vicina - potrà mai capirci davvero. I nostri io sono ciò che ci rende più infelici, ed è per questo che bramiamo perderli, non credere?»”

PhilosophyHuman NatureTragedyPhilosophy Of LifeGreekPhilosophy QuotesThe Secret HistoryDonna TarttDio Di Illusioni
Book:The Secret History
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“In his case, the decisive factor was the study of Ancient Greek, made possible when in 1397 Salutati invited the preeminent Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysolaras to reside in Florence and give classes in a language that had been almost completely forgotten. "At the coming of Chrysoloras," Bruni later recalled, "I was made to halt in my choice of lives, seeing that I held it wrong to desert law, and yet I reckoned it a crime to omit so great an occasion of learning the Greek literature." The lure proved irresistible: "Conquered at last by these reasonings, I delivered myself over to Chrysolaras with such passion that what I had received from him by day in hours of waking, occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.”

HumanismGreekRenaissanceClassics
Book:The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
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“The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile.”

InspirationalKindnessSmileGreekCuteGreek MythologyGodsPercy JacksonGreek GodsWine God
Book:The Battle of the Labyrinth
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“In the first place, sensation (aisthesis) is a corporeal process which we have in common with animals, and in which the impression of an exterior object is transmitted to the soul. By means of this process, an image (phantasia) of the object is produced in the soul, or more precisely in the guiding part (hegemonikon) of the soul”

PhilosophyVirtueJudgmentGreekStoicismRomanStoic
Book:The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
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“There are mountains in the world,' I said, 'which are huge, immense and dotted all over with monasteries. And in those monasteries live monks in saffron robes. They stay seated, with crossed legs, for one, two, six months at a time, thinking of one thing and one thing only. One thing, do you hear? Not two - one! They don't think of women and lignite or books and lignite, as we do; they concentrate their minds on one and the same thing, and they achieve miracles. You have seen what happens when you hold a glass out to the sun and concentrate all the rays onto one spot, Zorba? That spot soon catches fire, doesn't it? Why? Because the sun's power has not been dispersed but concentrated on that one spot. It is the same with men's minds. You do miracles, if you concentrate your mind on one thing and only one. Do you understand, Zorba?”

MindGreekConcentrationMind PowerZorba
Book:Zorba the Greek
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“We did not get on much further, for in another moment we were caught by a terrific squall from the West that snapped the forestays of the mast so that it fell aft, while all the ship’s gear tumbled about at the bottom of the vessel. The mast fell upon the head of the helmsman in the ship’s stern, so that the bones of his head were crushed to pieces, and he fell overboard as though he were diving, with no more life left in him. “Then Jove let fly with his thunderbolts, and the ship went round and round, and was filled with fire and brimstone as the lightning struck it. The men all fell into the sea; they were carried about in the water round the ship, looking like so many sea-gulls, but the god presently deprived them of all chance of getting home again.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:The odyssey
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“Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox’s horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one—even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:The odyssey
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“Inside it Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might take to be that of a young hound, but in truth she is a dreadful monster and no one—not even a god—could face her without being terror-struck. She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and carries off a man in each mouth.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:Homer: The Odessey
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“Asterion,' she told me. 'It means star.' Asterion. A distant light in an infinity of darkness. A raging fire if you came too close. A guide that would lead my family on the path to immortality. A divine vengeance upon us all. I did not know then what he would become. But my mother held him and nursed him and named him and he knew us both. He was not yet the Minotaur. He was just a baby. He was my brother.”

MythologyGreekGreek MythologyRetelling
Book:Ariadne
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“But in this story, as in so many others, what we really discern is the deceptive, ambiguous and giddy riddle of violence, passion, poetry and symbolism that lies at the heart of Greek myth and refuses to be solved. An algebra too unstable properly to be computed, it is human-shaped and god-shaped, not pure and mathematical. It is fun trying to interpret such symbols and narrative turns, but the substitutions don't quite work and the answers yielded are usually no clearer than those of an equivocating oracle.”

HistoryMythologyGreekClassicsOracles
Book:Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold
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“His gaze, which had been following the circling fruit, flickered to mine. I did not have time to look away before he said, softly but distinctly, “Catch.” A fig leapt from the pattern in a graceful arc towards me. It fell into the cup of my palms, soft and slightly warm. I was aware of the boys cheering. One by one, Achilles caught the remaining fruits, returned them to the table with a performer’s flourish. Except for the last, which he ate, the dark flesh parting to pink seeds under his teeth. The fruit was perfectly ripe, the juice brimming. Without thinking, I brought the one he had thrown me to my lips. Its burst of grainy sweetness filled my mouth; the skin was downy on my tongue. I had loved figs, once.”

MythologyGreekGreek MythologyAchillesIliadPatroclusPatroclus And Achilles
Book:The Song of Achilles
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“You know, Mac,”Cadmus said still looking out the window. “We may have to work on the way we tell our story …apparently it’s not amusing enough.” “I’ll try to include a joke between ‘he bled to death’and ‘the city burned’.”Machaon responded tersely.”

WarFunnyGreekStorySarcasmGreek MythologyJokeGodsAmusingDark HumorGreek GodsSarcastic HumorOdysseusTrojansTrojan HorseTrojan WarGreeksGreek Myths
Book:Chasing Odysseus
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