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Sappho Quotes

Browse 58 quotes about Sappho.

Sappho Quotes

“Does love even have a sex? I doubt it. If you are lucky enough to love, who cares what decorative flesh your lover sports? The divine delta, that juicy fig, the powerful phallus, that scepter of state- each is only an aspect of Aphrodite, after all. We are all hermaphrodites at heart- aren't we? The delta is as soft as Aphrodite, the phallus stiff as Ares' spear. And no one wears anything for long but a coat of dust. Only the songs of passion linger”

GenderSexualityGreek MythologySappho
Author:Erica Jong
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“You write poetry?" Klaus asked. He had read a lot about poets but had never met one. "Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine." "Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!”

HumorPoetryPoetWittyCleverPoemsSunnyLemony SnicketReferenceA Series Of Unfortunate EventsSapphoBaby TalkThe Austere Academy
Book:The Austere Academy
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“Sappho isn't really meant to be read. It's meant to be sung and there were dances for the songs, also. Sappho was a performance artist, and now she exists as a textual project. She was saved by her critics, and by people who wrote of her in letters to each other. As the morning sun lathers the pool through the long windows and stripes the opposite walls in gold, I look at the fragment translations. She's paper, too. A paper poet for a paper boy. People claim to be translating her but they don't, really, they use her to write poems from as they fill in the gaps in the fragments. A duet. She may have meant for these to be solos but they're duets now, though the second singer blends in with the first. The first singer in this case is offstage, like in the old days of stars who couldn't sing, a real singer hidden behind a curtain, which is the velvet drape of history.”

LiteratureMusicGreekAncient GreekSappho
Book:Edinburgh
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“Some say cavalry and others claim infantry or a fleet of long oars is the supreme sight on the black earth. I say it is the one you love. And easily proved. Did not Helen, who far surpassed all in beauty, desert the best of men her husband and king and sail off to Troy and forget her daughter and dear parents? Merely love's gaze made her bend and led her from her path. These tales remind me now of Anaktoria who is gone. And I would rather see her supple step and motion of light on her face than chariots of the Lydians or ranks of foot soldiers in bronze. Now this is impossible yet among the living I pray for a share and unexpectedly”

Willis BarnstoneSapphoHelen Of Troy
Author:Sappho
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“Song and the lyric poem came first. Prose was invented centuries later. In Israel, Greece, and China came the primal, model lyrics for two and a half millennia. Read the biblical Song of Songs in Hebrew, Sappho in Greek, and Wang Wei in Chinese and be deeply civilized. You will know the passions, tragedy, spirit, politic, philosophy, and beauty that have commanded our solitary rooms and public spaces. I emphasize solitary, because the lyric, unlike theater and sport, is an intimate dialogue between maker and reader. From the Jews we have their two bibles of wisdom poetry, from the Chinese we have thousands of ancient nightingales whose song is calm ecstasy, and from the Greeks we have major and minor names and wondrous poems. However, because of bigotry, most of Greek poetry, especially Sappho, was by religious decree destroyed from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. So apart from one complete ode, we read Sappho in fragments. Yet there survive fragrant hills for lovers and dark and luminous mountains for metaphysicians. Most of ancient Greek lyric poetry is contained in this volume. Do not despair about loss. You are lucky if you can spend your life reading and rereading the individual poets. They shine. If technology or return to legal digs in Egypt and Syria are to reveal a library of buried papyri of Greek lyrics equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, we should be able to keep singing and dancing for ten moons straight. For now, we have the song, human comedy, political outrage, and personal cry for centuries of good reading.”

SapphoSong Of SongsPierre GrangeWang Wei
Author:Pierre Grange
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“O Kypris and the Nereids, I pray you to sail my brother home unharmed and let him accomplish all that is in his heart and be released from former error and carry joy to his friends and bane to enemies and let no one bring us more grief. Let him honor me his sister. But black torment suffering for early days, citizens accused. Was it over millet seed? Pure Kypris, put aside old anger and free him from evil sorrow”

Willis BarnstoneAphroditeSappho
Author:Sappho
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