#ancient

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#ancient-greeks #atheism #boredom #brotherhood #cana

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

#ancient #complex #connected #more #movements

The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#bleached #desert #discarded #eternal #eternal life

The Ancient Games are relatively obscure to most Olympians, but to understand just what the Games are about, it is really necessary to investigate the roots and the meaning that has transformed culture and society for so many years. ↗

— Bill Toomey

#ancient #culture #games #investigate #just

Society therefore is an ancient as the world. ↗

— Voltaire

#society #therefore #world

I spent most of the '60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey. These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#being #connection #constant #continuity #countries

These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow the most narrow, conservative tenets of religion; or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual. ↗

— Joan D. Vinge

#ancient #blindly #close #comfort #conservative

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in. ↗

— Voltaire

#architecture #beasts #built #fight #greatest

There is an ancient legend which warns that, should we ever learn our true origin, our universe will instantly be destroyed. ↗

— Len Wein

#destroyed #ever #instantly #learn #legend

Hubbard set up the Church of Scientology in Hollywood in 1954 for a reason. He understood that celebrity was increasingly a feature of American public life, and celebrities themselves were going to be worshiped as minor deities were in the ancient world. The idea was: if you could get them, think how many people would follow. ↗

— Lawrence Wright

#american public #ancient #celebrities #celebrity #church