Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different. — Wendy Lesser
A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can. — Edith Hamilton
In Western Civilization, our elders are books. — Gary Snyder
For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness. — Thomas Bulfinch
Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture. — Juan Ramon Jimenez
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Civilization -- a heap of rubble scavenged by scrawny English Lit. vultures. — Malcolm Muggeridge
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth. — Edward Dahlberg
Literature is the question minus the answer. — Roland Barthes
Leisure without literature is death and burial alive. — Seneca The Elder
Leisure without literature is death and burial alive. — Seneca
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas! — D. H. Lawrence
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. — Samuel Johnson
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions. — Iris Murdoch
One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. — George Saintsbury
If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. — Rick Rubin
I had a lot of classical influences. I had classical music and opera and literature, but I also liked sleaze. And putting it together, sleaze and glamour, it just made sense to me. — Rick Owens
Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath.
Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature. — Steig Larsson
I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much. — Vladimir Putin
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Chess is my profession. I am my own boss; I am free. I like literature and music, classical especially. I am in fact quite normal; I have a Bohemian profession without being myself a Bohemian. I am neither a conformist nor a great revolutionary. — Bent Larsen
Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine. — Stephen Leacock
Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about. — Edward Abbey
Ancient History Quotes
Ancient Egypt was a Negro Civilization. The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt. — Cheikh Anta Diop
Who do you suppose invented computers? Speaking in terms relevant to you, in terms of earth history, let alone other worldly history, the computer, of course, came from Atlantis. — Frederick Lenz
What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude. — Isabel Wilkerson
Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That's an avalanche of data. — Lee Strobel
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. — Stephen Jay Gould
If the people of the United States come to Iran and see its ancient history and nature of Iran, and the people of Iran go to the United States to see America, this can shorten the walls of mistrust and improve the situation for the future. — Hassan Rouhani
Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself. — Anne Rice
Is your Christianity ancient history--or current events? — Samuel M. Shoemaker
Is your Christianity ancient history--or current events? — Sam Shoemaker
I suppose I felt doomed to be an artist early on because of the way I drew all over the books that I needed for school, from ancient history to math. I was more interested in drawing in the margins than actually doing the work. — Nancy Spero
Ancient Art Quotes
I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making. — Carol P. Christ
Atlantis was a highly evolved civilization where the sciences and arts were far more advanced than one might guess. Atlantis was technologically advanced in genetic engineering, computer science, inter-dimensional physics, and artistically developed with electronic music and crystal art forms. — Frederick Lenz
Unfortunately, half the boats were lost in a great storm at sea, and many members of the six boats that did make it to their destinations safely, were later killed by the very native people to whom they sought to transmit their knowledge of the Atlantean sciences, arts and metaphysics. — Frederick Lenz
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz
The old Atlantean sciences from the tribe of enlightenment, of which there are only a few remnants and chards left in this world, were medicine, law, computers, and the performing arts. — Frederick Lenz
Rae Chorze Fwaz was a mystery school. A mystery school is an occult order comprised of people who study meditation, enlightenment and psychic and occult arts. — Frederick Lenz
All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient. — Paul Beatty
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you. — Lao Tzu
A picture is a work of art, not because it is 'modern,' nor because it is 'ancient,' but because it is a sincere expression of human feeling. — John F. Carlson
Literature History Quotes
I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature. — Muhammad Iqbal
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau
How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? — Polly Toynbee
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. — David McCullough
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. — Barbara Tuchman
In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations. — Anne Bogart
Don’t learn literature from a history teacher. — Vijay Kedia
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers. — Carlos Fuentes
True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character. — David O. Mckay
It’s not rocket science. It’s social science – the science of understanding people’s needs and their unique relationship with art, literature, history, music, work, philosophy, community, technology and psychology. The act of design is structuring and creating that balance. — Clement Mok
Antiquity Quotes
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity. — Bal Gangadhar Tilak
This dogma (the soul) has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched the soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into a relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience. — John B. Watson
Good design is long-lasting! It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. — Dieter Rams
A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. — Benjamin Disraeli
I beg you, reject antiquity, tradition, faith, and authority! Let us begin anew by doubting everything we assume has been proven! — Giordano Bruno
History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same. — Walter Rauschenbusch
In antiquity slaves were, in all honesty called slaves. In the middle ages, they took the name of serfs. Nowadays they are called wage earners. — Mikhail Bakunin
Gold miners have incentive to conceal & minimize the full extent of their reserves, increase their capacity aggressively, and mine more gold as fast as they can. They are the enemies of gold investors. It’s a hopelessly antiquated system for storing value in the 21st century. — Michael Saylor
Ancient Greek Quotes
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles
Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal. — Alexander The Great
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. — Vladimir Lenin
As the ancient Greeks replaced myth-based explanations with mechanistic models of the Solar System, their emphasis shifted from asking why to asking how. — Max Tegmark
The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. — John F. Kennedy
We look at the ancient Greeks with their gods on a mountain top throwing lightning bolts and say, 'Those ancient Greeks. They were so silly. So primitive and naive. Not like our religions. We have burning bushes talking to people and guys walking on water. We're ...sophisticated.' — Paul Provenza
Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder. — Jok Church
He is the richest who is content with the least. — Socrates
Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy. — Aeschylus
Ancient Philosophy Quotes
After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. — Werner Heisenberg
Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few. — Pythagoras
Every trace of the old philosophy and literatureof the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth. — Saint John Chrysostom
Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists. — Pierre Hadot
The idea of the universe as an interconnected whole is not new; for millennia it's been one of the core assumptions of Eastern philosophies. What is new is that Western science is slowly beginning to realize that some elements of that ancient lore might be correct. — Dean Radin
According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat — Moliere
The gift of truth excels all other gifts. — Buddha
(The Tao) is always present and always available. . . . If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things. — Lao Tzu
...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato
Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. — Plato
Ancient World Quotes
İstanbul is a magical seal which unites Europe and Asia since the ancient times. Without a doubt, Istanbul is certainly the most beautiful place of the world. — Gerard De Nerval
How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international con�icts of today. — Arundhati Roy
We live in an age that's repeating itself endlessly. We're getting closer again to the techno-chic world we saw in Atlantis that occurs in countless planes. It's indigenous to enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz
The world has always been this way. I am sure in the mystery world of Egypt, ancient Atlantis, you pick a cosmos - There is always somebody on your case. — Frederick Lenz
To the great pharaohs it mattered a great deal to bury their treasures in the pyramids, which they thought they would bring to the other worlds. But obviously it doesn't matter to them now. They went, the goods stayed. — Frederick Lenz
The members of the Atlantean Mystery School were the earliest human explorers of the frontiers of inner space. Through their meditative journeys and explorations, they discovered many secret astral passageways that led to an infinite variety of other worlds and dimensions. — Frederick Lenz
The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it. — Walter Savage Landor
If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by. — Thomas Cole
The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within. — Fritjof Capra
According to ancient mythology, trees link the Earth to the sky. In this respect trees link humans to another world. — Richard Allen
Ancient Greece Quotes
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. — Steven Pressfield
The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us. — Jesse Owens
Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen. — George Bernard Shaw
In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece. — Nia Vardalos
We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears. — Margo Kaufman
And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them. — Stephen Gardiner
Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away--Is this the whole? — Lord Byron
I judge wisely...as if nothin ever surprise me,
Loungin, between two pillars of ivory.
I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece.
My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak. — Killah Priest
I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth. — Paul Robeson
Ancient Times Quotes
Winter always turns into Spring. Never, from ancient times on, has anyone heard or seen of winter turning back to autumn. — Nichiren
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? — William Blake
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part. — Richard Stallman
The members of the Mystery school, during the time of Atlantis, had psychically seen the subsequent ages of darkness. — Frederick Lenz
Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe. — Bill Bryson
Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song. — Zoltan Kodaly
During the time of Atlantis, members of the Mystery Schools discovered and developed specific concentration exercises that they found would radically increase and sharpen their innate psychic abilities. — Frederick Lenz
According to an ancient Sardinian legend, the bodies of those who are born on Christmas Eve will never dissolve into dust but are preserved until the end of time. — Grazia Deledda
During the age Atlantis, there were only several hundred thousand people living on our planet. They lived in a sublime state of harmony with nature. At that time, because of the purity of the earth's aura, it was much easier to meditate. — Frederick Lenz
The people to become enlightened in Atlantis lit the "flame of enlightenment" on earth for the first time. The members of the various mystery schools have kept the flame alive by passing on the secret techniques for attaining enlightenment from the time of Atlantis to our present day. — Frederick Lenz
At bottom, textual criticism for virtually all other ancient literature relies on creative conjectures, or imaginative guesses, at reconstructing the wording of the original. Not so with the New Testament. — Daniel B. Wallace
Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise. Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being must do so despite the evidence, not because of it. — Dennis McKinsey
I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient. — Mo Yan
Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. — Gilbert Murray
There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament. — F. F. Bruce
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge. — Bernie Taupin
Nothing in medical literature today communicates the idea that women's bodies are well-designed for birth. Ignorance of the capacities of women's bodies can flourish and quickly spread into the popular culture when the medical profession is unable to distinguish between ancient wisdom and superstitious belief. — Ina May Gaskin
More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work. — Fred Saberhagen
The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich. — James Loeb
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. — Victor Hugo
The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought — Bernard Bailyn
In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert? — Manuel Puig
We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature. — Sam Harris
Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients. — Samuel Johnson
The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds. — William Faulkner
I thought it was strange that I was called after a woman who killed herself in ancient literature. You just don't call your kid Dido and send her to school. But it's great for me now. It's just another thing that makes me stand out. — Dido Armstrong
I find it exciting to get any historical material from the ground. As you know, I love to put ancient Israel and its literature into their ancient contexts. And to rebuild - that is, to me, a very exciting historical task. — Frank Moore Cross
No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing. — Elie Wiesel
In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight. — Henry David Thoreau
In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life. — Isaac Bashevis Singer
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite. — Joseph Brodsky
The history of the Bible text is a romance of literature, though it is a romance of which the consequences are of vital import; and thanks to the succession of discoveries which have been made of late years, we know more about it than of the history of any other ancient book in the world. — Frederic G. Kenyon
In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now? — Dana Gioia
Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power. — Matthew Arnold
...a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal. — Samuel Johnson
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted. — Henry David Thoreau
We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema. — Werner Herzog
Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions. — Hermann Hesse
The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty. — Edward Dahlberg
I do not read the ancient languages, but I am beginning to study Greek. — Anne Rice
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