#greek

I have not been nourished by English Literature. . . for the simple reason that I have never found much there in which to rest my heart (or heart and head together). I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer... I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact ‘mad’. . . but I don’t believe I am... [I] set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#epic #greek #homer #myth #design

* Pindar, a Thebian Greek wrote (circa 350 B.C.E.) War is sweet to those who have no experience of it. But the experienced man trembles exceedingly in his heart at its approach. ↗

— Pindar

#history #war #experience

I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. ↗

— Eric Greitens

#navy-seals #pericles #education

Alecto was the oldest, unceasing in anger. Magaera was next, retaliator of jealousy, and Tisiphone, the last, regarded as the avenger of murder. ↗

— Elisabeth Naughton

#furies #greek-mythology #magaera #tisiphone #anger

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#clothing #greeks #humor #soul #wilde

[A]s Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions. ↗

— Maryrose Wood

#greek-tragedy #humor #reading #humor

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength. ↗

— Ovid

#classics #greek #humans #intelligence #metamorphoses

Call no man happy until he is dead. ↗

— Solon

#happiness #history #philosophy #the-good-life #life

You must remember that no one lives a life free from pain and suffering. ↗

— Sophocles

#literature #sophocles #life

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things. ↗