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#classics

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #classics




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

When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent - Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore - he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis. Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.


Brigid Brophy


#criticism #deep #half-witted-sheep #wordsworth #art

Although reading the classics in Latin in school may be not as fulfilling as it would be at a more mature age, few scientists can afford the time for such diversion later in life.


George Andrew Olah


#age #although #classics #diversion #few

The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.


Donna Tartt


#bit #classics #consequences #five #him

The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it, from the Classics to modern plays, to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.


Michael York


#classics #get #great #great thing #humor

A man leaves his great house because he's bored With life at home, and suddenly returns, Finding himself no happier abroad. He rushes off to his villa driving like mad, You'ld think he's going to a house on fire, And yawns before he's put his foot inside, Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion, Or even rushes back to town again. So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because It clings to him the more closely against his will) And hates himself because he is sick in mind And does not know the cause of his disease.


Titus Lucretius Carus


#classics #latin #lucretius #philosophy #life

I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and--unnecessary.


Edith Wharton


#love #age

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, 'I have no pleasure in them', than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.


Thomas Hardy


#age

It may occasion surprise that the decree of a temporal power sufficed to give the classics a position that can be compared in other cultures to the place of sacred scriptures inspired by divine revelation.


Hellmut Wilhelm


#i-ching #occult #change

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?


Homer


#family #greece #insult #family






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