Quotessence
Home / Topics / Greek Quotes

Greek Quotes

Browse 1279 quotes about Greek.

Related topics

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsAncientWorldLatinAncient GreekMenFirstsWayGreeceMeanLanguageShouldMythologyHas BeensHumansGreek MythYearsArtNamesSaidGreek MythologyPhilosopherTwoWantWellsBelieveBookCountryMadeTragedyGreek PhilosopherPhilosophyGivingLittlesStatesWarDoeFatherGreek GodMindUseWritingIdeasMightModernMythStillsAgeChildrenFactsKindBeautifulBigsFormGreek TragedyProblemRealStudyTryingBodyCivilizationDifferentLongMayChristianEuropeLooksSeemsUsedWantedCenturyCultureHandsOrderPoliticalScienceTogetherFoundHebrewLastsLiteratureNationsPerfectPersonsPlayStoriesTermWesternWould BeCoursesThreeChristianityDramaMotherOriginalsReasonSchoolmore

Greek Quotes

“Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he'll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.”

IfsMenLooksHalfWiseCenturyThirdsSevenGreekSwearSage
Book:Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis
Create image

“Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.”

PeopleKnowsMenWayFirstsHas BeensMadeReasonDifficultCan DoAnimalViewsVirtueDifficultyTablesVariousComplicatedIntellectCleverRationalGreekMasteryGreeceCalculationsComplicationArithmeticVery CleverMultiplicationNumerals
Author:Bertrand Russell
Create image

“The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic.”

LongUsePoetryPurposeNaturalDifferencesSimpleEmotionalPoetCreaturesLogicTreatsDatingGreekProsePoeticAcademicVocabularyPreferenceBricksFormationDefianceBuilderLiving CreaturesUnemotionalTime Poetry
Book:Some speculations on literature, history, and religion
Create image

“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”

MenMindReasonHandsSeemsFormUniverseNaturalExistenceWesternAcceptedRationalArtisticGreekCosmosMeaninglessIrrationalFormalMeaninglessness
Author:William Barrett
Create image

“The idea of childhood as a social invention, in retrospect, is hardly credible. In the Bible, in writings of the Greeks and Romans, and in the works of the first great educator of the modern era, Comenius, children were recognized as being both different from adults and different from one another with respect to their stages of development. To be sure, the scientific study of children and the increased length of life in modern times have enhanced our understanding of age differences, but they have always been acknowledged.”

WritingFirstsChildrenIdeasDifferentAgeSocialUnderstandingDifferencesStudyModernChildhoodStageDevelopmentAdultsInventionErasGreekLengthEducatorCredibleRetrospectModern TimesAge DifferenceModern EraStages Of DevelopmentLength Of Life
Author:David Elkind
Create image

“The Greeks were smarter than us, and they had different words for different kinds of love. There's storge, which is family love. That's not us. There's eros, which is sexual love. There's philia, which is brotherly love. And then there's the highest form. Agape.” He pronounced it “aga-pay.” “That's transcendental love, like when you place the other person above yourself.”

KindPersonsDifferentFormPayHighestGreekDifferent KindsSmarterFamily LoveTranscendentalKinds Of LoveErosBrotherlyBrotherly LoveAgapeDifferent Kinds Of Love
Book:Openly Straight
Create image

“The principal thing is the question of how our culture views age: that old is ugly Just think of Rodin, how he dealt with people of all ages. I have the feeling that I'm alive, I have a body I can make it extremely interesting. That keeps me alive and vital. It's a kind of process of energizing myself by my belief that the classical tradition of art that we've inherited from the Greeks is a load of bullshit.”

PeopleThinkingKindArtI CanFeelingsBodyAgeCultureBeliefProcessInterestingViewsAliveTraditionUglyGreekLoadPrincipalBullshitI'm AliveEnergizingRodin
Author:John Coplans
Create image

“And when the book of Daniel was showed to him (Alexander the Great) wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.”

ShouldPersonsBookGreekEmpiresMacedonia
Book:The Works of Flavius Josephus...: With Three Dissertations, Concerning Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, James the Just, God's Command to Abraham, Etc. and Explanatory Notes and Observations
Create image

“The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.”

PeopleReasonCharacterAgeFormHumanityRegretComfortCreatingModelsShameSimplicityMannersSubstanceGreekFancyGloriousRemarkableSuperiorityRivalsFullnessUnnaturalEnergeticUniting
Book:Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Create image

“I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.”

KnowsMenMayTwoCountryUseLanguageCommonEducationOpinionKnowledgeKnowingLearningModernEnglandGreekGreat MenThrownLive ByCustomsLatinClosetsAmusementGeographyIntercourseBargainsComplianceUseful KnowledgeModern Languages
Author:Lord Chesterfield
Create image

“At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.”

YearsFirstsSeemsCriticsDecadesErasPostsGreekEtcLatinAutomobileLabeling
Author:W. H. Auden
Create image

“[On the New Testament:] I ... must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have.”

ThinkingMenWritingLittlesDifferentReadingStudyProduceHe ManHonorBibleVariousGreekProtestInterpretationSexismPassagesTestamentTranslationsNew TestamentCommentaryHebrew
Book:Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman: Addressed to Mary S. Parker
Create image

“To later Romans Ennius was the personification of the spirit of early Rome; by them he was called "The Father of Roman Poetry." We must remember how truly Greek he was in his point of view. He set the example for later Latin poetry by writing the first epic of Rome in Greek hexameter verses instead of in the old Saturnian verse. He made popular the doctrines of Euhemerus, and he was in general a champion of free thought and rationalism.”

WritingFirstsMadeRememberSpiritFatherViewsExamplePoint Of ViewDoctrineGreekChampionLatinRomeVersesEpicRationalismFree ThoughtPersonification
Author:Quintus Ennius
Create image

“The three states of the caterpillar, larva, and butterfly have, since the time of the Greek poets, been applied to typify the human being,--its terrestrial form, apparent death, and ultimate celestial destination.”

HumansStatesFormThreeHuman BeingsPoetUltimateImmortalityGreekDestinationButterflyCelestialCaterpillars
Book:Salmonia: Or, Days of Fly Fishing. With Some Account of the Habits of Fishes Belonging to the Genus Salmo
Create image

“Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.”

GivingFeelsFirstsSoulWaterBoysSeaCrazyLandBrotherHolyHealthySightEnvironmentalShipsGreekMysticalDeitiesVibrationsVoyagesPassengersRobustHealthy Soul
Book:Moby Dick
Create image

“I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion...well, surely there was a way to learn that trick.”

WayYearsWellsHardWantedLastsBeautifulSpacePleasureMissingDivineBalanceAnxietyStressLongingTricksDevotionGreekGiantsEnjoymentUrgesWorldlyTrashTranscendenceStress Free
Author:Elizabeth Gilbert
Create image