Best 393 quotes in «ancient quotes» category

Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath.

Ancient documents described the symbol as an ambigram—ambi meaning “both”—signifying it was legible both ways. And although ambigrams were common in symbology— swastikas, yin yang, Jewish stars, simple crosses—the idea that a word could be crafted into an ambigram seemed utterly impossible.

Ancient aphorisms outlived centuries. Modern aphorisms can barеly survive from book to book.

Ancient miracles are technological wonders.

As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things.

But a smell shivered him awake. It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close. The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear. The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel. A shadow moved. It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow...

but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face my love is too saturday nite to have thrown back on my face my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face my love is too music to have thrown back on my face

Epic art is founded on action, and the model of a society in which action could play out in greatest freedom was that of the heroic Greek period; so said Hegel, and he demonstrated it with The Iliad: even though Agamemnon was the prime king, other kings and princes chose freely to join him and, like Achilles, they were free to withdraw from the battle. Similarly the people joined with their princes of their own free will; there was no law that could force them; behavior was determined only by personal motives, the sense of honor, respect, humility before a more powerful figure, fascination with a hero's courage, and so on. The freedom to participate in the struggle and the freedom to desert it guaranteed every man his independence. In this way did action retain a personal quality and thus its poetic form. Against this archaic world, the cradle of the epic, Hegel contrasts the society of his own period: organized into the state, equipped with a constitution, laws, a justice system, an omnipotent administration, ministries, a police force, and so on. The society imposes its moral principles on the individual, whose behavior is thus determined by far more anonymous wishes coming from the outside than by his own personality. And it is in such a world that the novel was born.

Faith has been a cornerstone and foundation of our species, and other of the hominidae taxonomy for millions of years. It is the foundation of good relationships, confidence, and even discerning wisdom and truth.

Fear is the ghost of ancient. It consumes faithless human.

-flashed Langdon the thumbs-up sign. Langdon smiled weakly and returned the gesture, wondering if she knew it was the ancient phallic symbol for masculine virility.

Forget not the Sacred Sands... The grains that pass through Time’s ancient hands!

General..behold the future of weaponry." "What the hell I am seeing here, Colonel?" "It's..technologart of ancient weaponry, Sir!" "It's..what?

God is the ultimate ground of Being, and this ultimate ground of Being is YOU. For one who realizes their true nature as God, as Consciousness, life becomes a joy without end.

Have you ever had a dream that you were certain was real, only to wake up and realize that everyone and everything in the dream was really you? Well this is how many mystics describe the nature of our reality, as a dream in which we think we are individual personalities existing in the physical universe. But eventually, like in all dreams, we will wake up. Except in this dream we do not wake up to realize we are still in the world, we awake from the world to realize that we are God.

He held the ribbon that tied her bodice. "You like to read about vampires but your mother thinks its unhealthy. Do you really want so desperately to become aligned with the night?" She frantically shook her head. "I can show you a more ancient evil," he promised in a soothing voice. He tugged on the ribbon, untying the bow. "One that has existed since the beginning of time." "Right." She tried to force the word out with a sarcastic tone, but failed. "Not many people know about the Atrox and its Followers, but you will," he assured her. "You're not being funny anymore," she answered with more whimper than anger. He let his finger trace up her body to her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to look in his eyes. "I was never trying to be. I was only trying to explain what I am." She looked quickly behind her as if searching for a way to escape. He paused for a moment, hoping she would run. When she didn't, he continued, "I can dissolve into shadow. Stay that way for days if I want. It's one of my powers." "Stop teasing me," she whined. "You're scaring me now." He leaned closer. "I can also enter your mind and take you into mine. Do you want me to show you?" "No," she pleaded. It wasn't the strange light in the graveyard that gave her face such an unnatural pallor now. The true beauty of fear shimmered in her eyes. "Let me show you." He seeped into her mind and brought her back into his. He could feel her struggle and then stop. He let her feel what he was, the emptiness and evil.

His concept of allochrony - initially introduced shyly as 'untimeliness', then later radicalized to an exit from modernity - is based on the idea, as suggestive as it is fantastic, that antiquity has no need of repetitions enacted in subsequent periods, because it 'essentially' returns constantly on its own strength. In other words, antiquity - or the ancient - is not an overcome phase of cultural development that is only represented in the collective memory and can be summoned by the wilfulness of education. It is rather a kind of constant present - a depth time, a nature time, a time of being - that continues underneath the theatre of memory and innovation that occupies cultural time.

I can see clouds a thousand miles away, hear ancient music in the pines.

If we conform our behavior to God’s ancient moral prescription, we are entitled to the sweet benefits of life. But if we defy its imperatives, then death is the inevitable consequence. AIDS is only one avenue by which sickness and death befall those who play Russian roulette with God’s eternal moral law.

She is ancientness. She has lived forever. It has driven her insane.

It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill

It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill

One could only wish there were more who understood the love of family, of history, and of ancient, sacred bonds that grow deep within us all. If family is not worthy of our time and attention, who or what is?

On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life, We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one, And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree." Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end, While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.

Pay to go inside Neruda's home A body lies there with no dome. But right there in the front hall Lean a fairy against the icy wall. Oh Endless enigmas had the bard! Nice and large and calm backyard Ends In the middle of a rare room Rare portrait of revelishing gloom. Up climbing at the weird snail stair Does make you grasp for some air. And there's a room with bric-a-brac: Old and precious books all in a pack. Dare saying what I liked most of all? Enjoyed seeing visitors having a ball!

Shadowed beneath his brow bone were cold dark eyes containing secrets and sadness, bitterness and grief.

So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very air around us bound by chains.

That was the day the ancient songs of blood and war spilled from a hole in the sky And there was a long moment as we listened and fell silent in our grief and then one by one, we stood tall and came together and began to sing of life and love and all that is good and true And I will never forget that day when the ancient songs died because there was no one in the world to sing them.

The ancient sages used divine characters to create mythologies and scriptures to make them more believable. All scriptures are said to be the words of God so that people are convinced about their veracity and believe them.

The Dog was a different matter. She was new, or so old that any book that told of her was long since dust. The creature in the fog thought the latter.

The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things?

The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise of any of the known cultures, of a true civilization, of a comparatively advanced sort, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some respects, may well have been more advanced than the civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. In astronomy, nautical science, mapmaking and possibly ship-building, it was perhaps more advanced than any state of culture before the 18th Century of the Christian Era. It was in the 18th Century that we first developed a practical means of finding longitude. It was in the 18th Century that we first accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the 19th Century did we begin to send out ships for purposes of whaling or exploration into the Arctic or Antarctic Seas. The maps indicate that some ancient people may have done all these things.

A tudományos megismerés fejlődésével világunk egyre embertelenebbé válik. Az ember magányosnak érzi magát a világban, mivel kívül rekedt a természeten, és elveszítette a természet jelenségeivel való érzelmi "tudattalan azonosságát". A természeti jelenségek lassan elveszítették szimbolikus jelenségüket. A mennydörgés többé már nem a haragvó isten hangja, a villámlás sem az ő bosszúálló nyila. A folyóban nincs többé szellem, a fa már nem az ember életforrása, a kígyó nem a bölcsesség megtestesítője, a hegyi barlangban már nem laknak a hatalmas démonok. Nem szólnak az emberhez a kövek, növények és állatok, és az ember sem szól hozzájuk abban a hitben, hogy azok majd megértik őt. A természettel való kapcsolatát elveszítette, és ezzel együtt elveszett a szimbolikus kapcsolatból fakadó rejtett érzelmi energia is. Ezért a hatalmas veszteségért álmaink szimbólumai kárpótolnak. Felszínre hozzák eredeti természetünket - ösztöneinket és sajátságos gondolkodásunkat. Azonban álmaink, sajnálatos módon, a természet nyelvén fejezik ki közlendőiket, amely idegen és felfoghatatlan számunkra. Így mindez azzal a feladattal állít szembe benünket, hogy a modern beszéd racionális szavaira és fogalmaira fordítsuk le a természet nyelvét, olyan modern nyelvre, amely mentes a primitív kötöttségektől , nevezetesen az álomban megjelenő dolgokkal való participációtól.

I'd rather have a heart of gold Than all the treasure of the world.

In Advaita Vedanta, and in many other ancient wisdom traditions, the world is said to be an illusion. This illusion is commonly referred to as maya, a Sanskrit name which refers to the apparent, or objective reality which is superimposed on the ultimate reality in order to generate the phenomena of what we call the material world. Maya is the magic by which we create duality—by which we create two worlds from one. This creation is an illusory creation—it is not real—it is an imaginary manifestation of the one Universal Consciousness, appearing as all of the various phenomena in objective reality. Maya is God’s, or Consciousness’s, creative power of emptying or reflecting itself into all things and thus creating all things—the power of subjectivity to take on objective appearance.

It made the woman feel like a thousand seas had come together from all worlds, like faraway lands had been bridged together, and the vastness of the known and the unknown were somehow easier to comprehend.

It was a music of the spirit, seeking peace, not emotional release, expressing the hunger of the soul rather than the heart. A way of sequencing notes so ancient it might be music's mother lode, its Fertile Crescent. It wouldn't have grated, I felt, on the ears of ancient Greeks or Egyptians or Mesopotamians or Sumerians—or even on the august auditory equipment of the Buddha or Lao-tzu.

Move thy tongue, For silence is a sign of discontent.

Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three canon roars.

Our brains dream lost ancient dreams as well as throw ropes in the air as though to catch what is uncatchable – the future.

Policemen are often confronted with situations which baffle them at first. A certain crime scene may seem meaningless, but they have to derive some meaning out of it. They have to connect the dots, find the links, delve into its history, look for evidence, come up with a zillion theories and arrive at truth. The thing is, truth is always stranger than fiction.

Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, [...] came to teach [the ancient inhabitants of Mexico] the benefits of settled agriculture and the skills necessary to build temples. Although this deity is frequently depicted as a serpent, he is more often shown in human form--the serpent being his symbol and his alter ego--and is usually described as "a tall bearded white man" ... "a mysterious person ... a white man with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes and a flowing beard." Indeed, [...] the attributes and life history of Quetzalcoatl are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character ... the memory of whose benefactions lingered after his death, and whose personality was eventually deified. The same could very well be said of Oannes--and just like Oannes at the head of the Apkallu (likewise depicted as prominently bearded) it seems that Quetzalcoatl traveled with his own brotherhood of sages and magicians. We learn that they arrived in Mexico "from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles," and that Quetzalcoatl was regarded as having been "the founder of cities, the framer of laws and the teacher of the calendar.

So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –

The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that ‘nothing’ is unstable.

The Artist started painting the Ancient Fire, inhaling the wine in search of philosophical beginnings…

The distance of time’s separation brings us remnants of memories so ancient that most are lost in the mists of illusion…

There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.

The smiles of ancient souls That bless this, Our space to live and learn And urge us on to shine again…

The moles came bearing their lamps and then the most ancient and magical creature that ever danced beneath the moon was lost in darkness once more.

The shattered wall, the broken tower have a story to tell - from the touchstones of ruins and ancient texts we make a pilgrimage. from The Ruins