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Greek Quotes

“Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.”

Bitter Greek Satire

Author:John Dryden

“Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of Latin.”

Ignorant Greek Latin Shameful Linguists

Author:Juvenal

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of exiles.”

Mother Names Sea Land New York Fame Conquer Greek Flames Giants Sunset Gates Yearning Lightning Limbs Exile Wretched Torches Brazen Statue Of Liberty Colossus

Author:Emma Lazarus

“The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.”

Hair Cold Fairs Lips Greek Cheeks Bronze

Book:Literary studies, ed. by R.H. Hutton

Source: Literary studies, ed. by R.H. Hutton

“Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.”

Order Source Balance Clarity Greek Proportion Spares Egypt Abstraction Elegance Reduction Starks Simplification Classicism Condensation

Book:Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

“Creative people... are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of 'divine madness,' to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks.”

People May Facts Used Term Creative Divine Anxiety Madness Paid Greek Insecurity Sensitivity Distinguished Creative People High Prices

Author:Rollo May

“'Doctor Who' was the first mythology that I learned, before ever I ran into Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythologies.”

Firsts Doctors Mythology Ran Greek Doctor Who Egyptian

Author:Neil Gaiman

“Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.”

Use Language Difficult Harmony Musical Greek Latin Obscure Corresponding

Book:The Architecture of M. Vitruvius Pollio in Ten Books, Translated from the Latin by J. Gwilt

Source: The Architecture of M. Vitruvius Pollio in Ten Books, Translated from the Latin by J. Gwilt

“We talked about politics constantly in my family growing up in North Carolina. There were always debates. Being of Greek background, it's in our blood to drink coffee and talk politics.”

Growing Up Growing Blood Drink My Family Coffee Debate Backgrounds Greek Carolina North Carolina Family Growing Up

Author:Zach Galifianakis

“Although I was four years at the University [of Wisconsin], I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and and geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have stayed longer.”

World Should Years Littles Would Be Science Courses Study Four Should Have Mathematics University Physics Satisfied Greek Latin Chemistry New World Four Years Geology Wisconsin Botany

Book:Essential Muir

Source: Essential Muir

“Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.”

Age Pain Alive Stage Paint Library Greek Shelves Crowded Chaucer

Book:Personal Poems, Complete Volume IV., the Works of Whittier: Personal Poems

Source: Personal Poems, Complete Volume IV., the Works of Whittier: Personal Poems

“I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown.”

World Humans Body Hands Eye Beautiful Perfect Type Highest Models All Things Envy Greek Crowns Human Body Old Greek Phidias

Book:The Lands of the Saracen: Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain

Source: The Lands of the Saracen: Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain

“The Greek word euphuia, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to perceive it; a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things" - as Swift most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light."”

Giving Two Book Character Light Culture Battle Perfection Notion Perceive Greek Sweetness Harmonious

Author:Matthew Arnold

“Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it.”

Thinking Should Writing America Form Next Proud Boxes Checks African American Greek Grandmother Heritage Grandfather Next Time Cultural Heritage Hominids

Book:Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

Source: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

“The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.”

Thinking Trying Form Law Causes Saws Greek

Book:Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)

Source: Woman in the Ninteenth Century (EasyRead Large Edition)

“Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former - although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity.”

Source: Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.”

Knows Men Believe May Art Two Democracy Gun Shots Doctrine Idiot Greek Branches Latin Untrue Degrading Complementary Latin And Greek

Author:H. L. Mencken

“The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy... and also a prolific author.”

Philosophy Facts Christianity Teaching Buddhism Ancient Defined Greek Taoism Speakers Tibetan Illuminating Ancient Greek Tibetan Buddhism Greek Philosophy

Author:Nevill Drury

“Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.”

Source: One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In

“The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'.”

Space Ships Greek Latin Pants Sailing Astronaut Sailor Chimpanzees

Book:Packing for Mars

Source: Packing for Mars

“The Greek word pseudepigrapha is a Greek word meaning 'falsely superscribed,' or what we moderns might call writing under a pen name. The classification, 'OT Pseudepigrapha,' is a label that scholars have given to these writings.”

Writing Might Names Given Labels Greek Pens Scholar Classification

Author:Craig A. Evans

“To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.”

Ifs Art Today Past Alive Painter Greek Works Of Art Live For Today

Book:Picasso, Braque, Léger: masterpieces from Swiss collections

Source: Picasso, Braque, Léger: masterpieces from Swiss collections

“In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day.”

Children Soul Self Expression Shapes Myth Greek Poetic Self Expression

Author:Hermann Hesse

“This fighting-shy of every obligation partly explains the phenomenon, half ridiculous, half disgraceful, Of the setting-up in our days of the platform of "youth" as youth. ... In comic fashion people call themselves "young," because they have heard that youth has more rights than obligations, since it can put off the fulfilment of these latter to the Greek Kalends of maturity. ...[T]he astounding thing at present is that these take it as an effective right precisely in order to claim for themselves all those other rights which only belong to the man who has already done something.”

“No word in our language - not even "Socialism" - has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut.”

Has Beens Language Mystery Divine Mouths Socialism Greek Mysticism Employed Mystic Esoteric Connexion

Author:William Ralph Inge

“In 1879 the Bengali scholar S.M. Tagore compiled a more extensive list of ruby colors from the Purana sacred texts: ‘like the China rose, like blood, like the seeds of the pomegranate, like red lead, like the red lotus, like saffron, like the resin of certain trees, like the eyes of the Greek partridge or the Indian crane…and like the interior of the half-blown water lily.’ With so many gorgeous descriptive possibilities it is curious that in English the two ancient names for rubies have come to sound incredibly ugly.”

“I consider Greeks the Jews of the sea.”

Author:Julie Klausner

“It was precisely this notion of infinite series which in the sixth century BC led the Greek philosopher Zeno to conclude that since an arrow shot towards a target first had to cover half the distance, and then half the remainder, and then half the remainder after that, and so on ad infinitum, the result was, as I will now demonstrate, that though an arrow is always approaching its target, it never quite gets there, and Saint Sebastian died of fright.”

Firsts Results Half Century Shots Died Infinite Distance Series Notion Saint Philosopher Greek Target Ads Never Quit Arrows Fright Greek Philosopher

Book:Jumpers

Source: Jumpers

“Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim, Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame? In living medals see her wars enroll'd, And vanquished realms supply recording gold?”

War Fame Conscious Gold Claims Greek Realms Britain Medal

Book:The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

Source: The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope

“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect.”

Made Effort Principles Doubt Effects Style Depends Genius Architecture Greek No Doubt Infinity Execution Gothic Gothic Architecture

Book:Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Source: Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?”

Should Wells Country States Government Next Plans Delight Witness Greek Torture Why Not Territory Hopelessness Turkish Serbia Bulgaria Ottomans Macedonia Bulgarians

Author:William E. Gladstone

“I pissed off Greeks, particularly in my family, for years to come, because I popularized the word "malaka," which hitherto had not been known outside of the community. It's basically "jack off," you know? Masturbator. So I remember my mother was not pleased at the time. She was, like, "Oh, John, couldn't you have used a better word?" There's no better word, Mom!”

Knows Years Remember Used Mother Community Known Mom My Family Greek Pissed Off

Author:John Kapelos

“I've long said that comic books are the modern equivalent of our Greek myths.”

Long Said Book Modern Myth Comic Greek Comic Book Greek Myth

Author:David S. Goyer

“Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.”

Ifs Men Humans Doe Human Nature Negative Oneself Contrary Self Worth Contemporary Permanent Analysis Greek Rebellion Rebel Suspicion

Author:Albert Camus

“What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason — instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

“He was born a King. The wise men came from the East and asked, 'Where is He that is born King of the Jews?' (Matthew 2:2). He died a King. In Greek, in Latin, and in Hebrew the description was written above His cross, 'This is Jesus, The King' (Matthew 27:37)”

Men Jesus Born Wise Written Kings Crosses Died Jew East Greek Description Latin Hebrew Matthew

Author:W. A. Criswell

“Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.”

Source: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays

“[T]hroughout the ages to be educated meant to be unproductive.... our word "school" - and its equivalent in all European languages - derives from a Greek word meaning "leisure.”

Age School Language Educated Greek Meant To Be Leisure Our Words Unproductive

Book:Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New

Source: Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New

“The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children.”

World Children Stills Known Shapes Weapons Size Monsters Socialism Greek Homosexuality Stumbling

Author:Quentin Crisp

“Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.”

World Philosophy Lasts Faces Form Philosopher Greek Retreat Greek Philosopher

Book:History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition

Source: History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition

“As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.”

People Men Giving Humans Kind Stills Life Is Given Common Subjects Fit Blessing Good Things Admire Human Life Greek Moderation Observing Deities Splendid Likelihood Felicity Vicissitudes

Author:Solon

“If a German or an Austrian, a Greek or a Bashibazouk, had composed Gerontius, the whole world would have by now admitted its qualities.”

Ifs World Whole Quality Whole World Greek

Author:Neville Cardus

“School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.”

Should Children School Prayer Attention Subjects Students Mathematics Substance God Love Greek Faculty

Book:The Simone Weil Reader

Source: The Simone Weil Reader

“The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the calculations of the school ... The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge.”

Giving Years School Used Stars Minutes Century Moon Tables Jew Astronomy Indian Greek Variation Vary Calculations Annuals Alexandria

Author:Jean Sylvain Bailly

“I shall speak only of the part I have stayed in- the districts of Lakes Ochrida and Presba. Here there are Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, and Vlahs. Of Turks, except officials and such of the army as may be quartered on the spot, there are few. The Albanians, I believe, are all Moslem. Should there be any Christians they would be officially classed as Greeks. A large part of the land near Lake Presba is owned by Moslem Albanians as ' chiftliks '(farms).”

Should Believe May Would Be Christian Speak I Believe Land Army Spots Greek Officials Lakes Farms

Author:Edith Durham

“As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.”

Should Country House Tree Structure Architecture Chinese Greek Gothic Tents Refinement Egyptian Cabins Caverns

Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of

Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of

“Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth.”

“I had the good luck a few years ago to visit the archeological site of Zippori in Israel ... I could see here displayed the Greek culture that Jesus decisively rejected, the same Greek culture that infiltrated the Christian religion soon after his death and has dominated Christianity ever since.”

Years Christian Culture Jesus Christianity Years Ago Luck Israel Greek Rejected Site Good Luck Greek Culture

Author:Freeman Dyson

“The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.”

Source: The History of Freedom: Great Event

“The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.”