Best 551 quotes in «greek quotes» category

By the time writing was invented, the Greeks and Egyptians had already learned to extract opium from poppies to facilitate sleep.

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.

Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.

Conflict is the basis of drama. I guess that goes back as long as time has existed as far as mankind is concerned, dating back to the Greek tragedies or the Old Testament. And violence is a form of conflict, so whether that's catharsis or whether that has some socially damaging effect on audiences - I suppose that would just depend.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.

Creation is thus God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden Being." This means that we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature, the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. (pg. 308, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)

Despite the deep reforms we are making, traders and speculators have forced interest rates on Greek bonds to record highs.

Don't trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts. -Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

Even hidden in the most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights: in both, a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.

Ennius was the father of Roman poetry, because he first introduced into Latin the Greek manner and in particular the hexameter metre.

Envy is what makes you, when an acquaintance is lustily telling you that she's dating a Greek god of a guy, ask, 'Which one, Hades?'

Ergometer is Greek for 'work meter'

European Union partners never said European Union partners're going to renege on any promises, European Union partners said that European Union partners promises concern a four-year parliamentary term, european Union partners will be spaced out in an optimal way, in a way that is in tune with our bargaining stance in Europe and also with the fiscal position of the Greek state.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.'

Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

England and Greece are friends. English blood was shed on Greek soil in the war against fascism, and Greeks gave their lives to protect English pilots.

Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria, the Centre of science and learning in the ancient world. Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else, whom he called barbarians and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure. He thought it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples. But Erathosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism, he believed there was good and bad in every nation.

"Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

Everybody can't be like Redford and pop out there and make big bucks right away because you look like a Greek god... The guy's a friend of mine and he has absolutely no privacy in his life.

For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa.

Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of Latin.

Every lesson I learned as a kid was at the dinner table. Being Greek, Sicilian and Ruthenian - we are an emotional bunch. It is where we laughed, cried and yelled - but most importantly, where we bonded and connected.

Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?

Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading.

For instance, we have the largest Polish population of any city except for Warsaw, and the largest Lithuanian population outside Lithuania. More Italians, Greeks, Irish, Latinos, Serbians, and Croatians than you can shake a stick at. Chicago has it all, I don't know why I'd ever leave.

For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death.

For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away.

For me the form, the stanzaic shape, is an endorsement, proof that I'm engaged with the Latin or Greek at an original level, that my versions are explorations.

For the liver, what's so interesting is that there's no stem cell in the liver. So the normal liver actually can regenerate. It's one of the only organs in the human body that can do this, and we've known this since the time of Greek mythology.

Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison.

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude.

Greek is the morning land of languages, and has the freshness of early dew in it which will never exhale.

Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

From Architecture down to the Zodiac, every science worthy of the name was imported by the Greeks

From Pandora's Box, where all the ills of humanity swarmed, the Greeks drew out hope after all the others, as the most dreadful of all. I know no more stirring symbol; for, contrary to the general belief, hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself.

Greece, alone, is in a very vulnerable position. If the Greeks had had support from progressive left and popular forces elsewhere in Europe they might have been able to resist the demands of the Troika, but they had almost no support. Not even from Portugal, Spain, or other left forces. They were left alone.

Greece is at a crucial crossroads. The choices that are made and the policies that are enforced will have a decisive impact on the wellbeing of Greeks. The way forward will not be easy but the problems can be solved, and will be solved, if there is unity, co-operation and consensus.

Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man.

Higher than "thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes), and higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the Greek gods).

Harmony is an obscure and difficult musical science, but most difficult to those who are not acquainted with the Greek language; because it is necessary to use many Greek words to which there are none corresponding in Latin.

Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations.

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad.