#ancient

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

Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times—letting pass infinite other examples—a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to have it near oneself, to honor his house with it, and to be able to have it imitated by those who delight in that art, and how the latter then strive with all industry to represent it in all their works; and seeing, on the other hand, that the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired than imitated—indeed they are so much shunned by everyone in every least thing that no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us—I can do no other than marvel and grieve… From this it arises that the infinite number who read [the histories] take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained within them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible—as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity. Wishing, therefore, to turn men from this error, I have judged it necessary to write on all those books of Titus Livy... ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#classics #history #politics #art

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. ↗

— Isabel Allende

#although #ancient #ancient times #born #catholic

Not unless I do all these ancient and Italian or French or Baroque in the beginnning, I do German. ↗

— Victoria de los Angeles

#baroque #french #german #i #i do

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. ↗

— David Antin

#always #ancient #anxiety #began #deficiencies

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#beginning #cause #determined #existence #fact

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring. ↗

— Enid Bagnold

#again #ageless #ancient #beneath #child

The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island. ↗

— William Blackstone

#been #bulwark #defense #england #ever