#ancient

Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times. ↗

— David Bohm

#ancient times #back #between #body #evolved

Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#ancient rome #confident #continual #expansion #human

We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#ancient #because #century #difficult #find

All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold. ↗

— Anita Brookner

#being #bold #favor #fortune #gift

Wales was in ancient times divided into three parts nearly equal, consideration having been paid, in this division, more to the value than to the just quantity or proportion of territory. ↗

— Giraldus Cambrensis

#ancient times #been #consideration #divided #division

Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature. ↗

— George Crumb

#being #could #idea #into #light

CHORUS: You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain. ↗

— Sophocles

#sophocles #tragedy #life

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

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