#ancient

Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love. ↗

— Lucinda Franks

#adoration #ancient #baby #bethlehem #brilliant

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

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#confines #ease #happy #happy man #himself

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

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

#am #ancient #aware #beings #crises

If you look in an etymology dictionary, ‘etymology’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘true’. That’s why I don’t trust what people say unless they’re speaking an ancient language. ↗

— Bauvard

#etymology #funny #humor #language #truth

Well, good luck to you both. Rome will be the winner whoever is the victor'. Cicero began to move away but then checked himself, and a slight frown crossed his face. He returned to Catulus. 'One more thing, if I may? Who proposed this widening of the franchise?' 'Caesar' Although Latin is a language rich in subtlety and metaphor, I cannot command the words, either in that tongue or even in Greek, to describe Cicero's expression at that moment. 'Dear gods' he said in a tone of utter shock. 'Is it possible he means to stand himself?' 'Of course not. That would be ridiculous. He's far too young. He's thirty-six. He's not yet even been elected praetor' 'Yes, but even so, in my opinion, you would be well advised to reconvene your college as quickly as possible and go back to the existing method of selection.' 'That is impossible' 'Why?' 'The bill to change the franchise was laid before the people this morning' 'By whom?' 'Labienus' 'Ah!' Cicero clapped his hand to his forehead. ↗

— Robert Harris

#humor #change

There were so many forms of prehistoric technology. Of those, men dig a few which fit into current society. ↗

— Toba Beta

#fit-into-society #found #men