#magnificent

Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head. It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#art

The trouble is now, with rock'n'roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in. ↗

— Robert Plant

#could #elusive #get #gets #had

We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children. ↗

— Patricia Sun

#around #beauty #because #brains #brilliance

Muhammad Ali - he was a magnificent fighter and he was an icon... Every head must bow, every knee must bend, every tongue must confess, thou art the greatest, the greatest of all time, Muhammad, Muhammad Ali. ↗

— Don King

#art #bend #bow #confess #every

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times. ↗

— Mark R. Levin

#broad #conservatism #enduring #experience #magnificent

A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it. ↗

— Arnold Bennett

#cause #champagne #heels #high #high heels

Star Wars was magnificent, but you could tell Darth Vader's ships were glued together. ↗

— Gary Coleman

#darth #glued #magnificent #ships #star

My first Western was called The Magnificent Seven. ↗

— Eli Wallach

#first #magnificent #seven #western

The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives. ↗

— Denis Waitley

#endurance #finest #gives #life #lives

After all, didn't I blow a magnificent career? ↗

— Dick York

#blow #career #i #magnificent