Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 14

Here's something else I'd like your opinion about," I said. "If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn't the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?" "Certainly," he replied. "Now, the process of adjustment would be quite long this time, and suppose that before his eyes had settled down and while he wasn't seeing well, he had once again to compete against those same old prisoners at identifying those shadows. Would he make a fool of himself? Wouldn't they say that he'd come back from his upward journey with his eyes ruined, and that it wasn't even worth trying to go up there? And would they -- if they could -- grab hold of anyone who tried to set them free and take them up there and kill him?
Plato
Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born.
Yanis Varoufakis
The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
Plato
There is a Revolution, it’s a human and technological revolution
Natasha Tsakos
Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems
Epictetus
Is it not true that the clever rogue is like the runner who runs well for the first half of the course, but flags before reaching the goal: he is quick off the mark, but ends in disgrace and slinks away crestfallen and uncrowned. The crown is the prize of the really good runner who perseveres to the end.
Plato
To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?
Anaximenes
Living as an entity under a filled with stars sky and seeking for intuition, a voice whispers from your heart, for soul is unchained from whatever pulls it down, while what she is craving for is but only Ascension towards Divine ”.
Katerina Kostaki
The evening starIs the mostbeautifulof all stars
Sappho
Pain and betrayal and then nothingness. That's the death and she's almost welcoming it.
M.C. Frank
Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.
Ptolemy
I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia
Ptolemy
Sertorius rose up and spoke to his army, “You see, fellow soldiers, that perseverance is more prevailing than violence, and that many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Assiduity and persistence are irresistible, and in time overthrow and destroy the greatest powers whatever. Time being the favorable friend and assistant of those who use their judgment to await his occasions, and the destructive enemy of those who are unseasonably urging and pressing forward.
Plutarch
Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.
Aesop
Behind every crime lies an insult
Nicholas C. Rossis
A curse burns bright on crime.
Aeschylus
Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Patience and Impatience are having tea discussing Time. The conversation goes on endlessly.
Natasha Tsakos
If I were in his(Prophet Muhammad) presence, I would wash his feet.
Hercules
…Man’s heart is a ditch full of blood. The loved ones who have died throw themselves down on the bank of this ditch to drink the blood and so come to life again; the dearer they are to you, the more of your blood they drink.” - The Narrator.
Nikos Kazantzakis
What if Theater was the Pong of the the digital Ping?A place where the live experience has an function?
Natasha Tsakos
The day is crisp and clear, almost like every other morning he's taken the same walk in the snow, hiking to the forest and back.
M.C. Frank
God sent his beloved creatures to Datça for them to live longer.
Strabo
Everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone's mind, and if anyone of us is capable of such a thought, then all of us has the same capacity, capability, because we're all the same.
Yanni
Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?
Nikos Kazantzakis
Love of liberty, the refusal to accept your soul's enslavement, not even in exchange for paradise; stalwart games over and above love and pain, over and above death; smashing even the most sacrosant of the molds when they are unable to contain you any longer - these are the great cries of Crete. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Plato
You can't go home again. Your childhood is lost. The friends of your youth are gone. Your present is slipping away from you. Nothing is ever the same.
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong.
Sophocles
It's been said before: 'The sleep of reason produces monsters.
Apostolos Doxiadis
The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.
Plutarch
When two men are together, one of them may see some opportunity which the other has not caught sight of; if a man is alone he is less full of resource, and his wit is weaker.
Homer
There were nights for instance, especially in August, where the view of the full moon from the top of the Acropolis hill or from a high terrace could steal your breath away. The moon would slide over the clouds like a seducing princess dressed in her finest silvery silk. And the sky would be full of stars that trembled feebly, like servants that bowed before her. During those nights under the light of the August full moon, the city of Athens would become an enchanted kingdom that slept lazily under the sweet light of its ethereal mistress.
Effrosyni Moschoudi
Feel within, the pure and unconditional Love and embrace all.
Grigoris Deoudis
Do not believe that you alone can be right.The man who thinks that,The man who maintains that only he has the powerTo reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul—A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.
Sophocles
Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are rightTo warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—I hope that I shall never want to say!— that youHave reasoned badly. Yet there are other menWho can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.You are not in a position to know everythingThat people say or do, or what they feel:Your temper terrifies them—everyoneWill tell you only what you like to hear.
Sophocles
Take these things to heart, my son, I warn you.All men make mistakes, it is only human.But once the wrong is done, a mancan turn his back on folly, misfortune too,if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen,and stops his bullnecked ways. Stubbornnessbrands you for stupidity - pride is a crime.
Sophocles
I do not know whether anyone has ever succeeded in not enjoying praise. And, if he enjoys it, he naturally wants to receive it. And if he wants to receive it, he cannot help but being distraught at losing it. Those who are in love with applause have their spirits starved not only when they are blamed off-hand, but even when they fail to be constantly praised.
John Chrysostom
Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates
When you've made up your mind, no use lagging behind, go ahead and no relenting,Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Youth is a blind incongruous beast. It craves food but does not eat, is too timid to eat; it need simply nod to happiness, which strolls by on the street and would willingly stop, but it does not nod; it turns the faucet, permitting time to drain away uselessly and be lost, as though time were water. A beast that does not know it is a beast - such is youth. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
To refuse ever to deny your youth, right up to extreme old age, to battle all life long to transubstantiate your adolescent flowering into a fruit-ladden tree - that, I belive, is the road of the fulfilled man. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
The splendor of youth is, to a point, the splendor of error. Jealous the old, who have everything previewed! The nightingale will never come sing over your wisdom. It won’t, darlin’, it won’t.
Odysseus Elytis
Logic has rid us of the absurdity of our clothes. That’s progress, no irony, only now we are cold. Hale and ill trade bodies with unusual willingness, while in midair souls tangle. The young start out disgusted and Poetry is left to the memo-writers.
Odysseus Elytis
The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.
Homer
But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.
Nikos Kazantzakis
We are people-trees. Our roots are hidden in Earth .The branches spread out on Heavens.The fruits are our energy.Two different energies: The positive and negative ones.The balance of both carries the progress.Article by Author Katerina Kostaki :The Tree of Gnosis in the Garden of Eden
Katerina Kostaki
The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.
Nikos Kazantzakis
In order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach. The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his struggle to transform into virtue the impudence, dishonor, unfaithfulness, and malice within him. One day Lucifer will be the most glorious archangel standing next to God; not Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael—but Lucifer, after he has finally transubstantiated his terrible darkness into light.
Nikos Kazantzakis
I lack nothing, I tell you!”“Nothing?” I asked. “Not even heaven?”He lowered his head and was silent. But after a moment:“Heaven is too high for me. The earth is good, exceptionally good–and near me!”“Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.
Homer
27. Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of firends.
Epicurus
When you are on the air, there is no land you need to call home.
Grigoris Deoudis
The days of the future stand in fornt of usLike a line of candles all alightGolden and warm and lively little candlesThe days that are past are left behind
Constantinos P. Cavafis
The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him.
Plato
But you must know that only he who fights the darkness within will the day after tomorrow have his own share in the sun.
Odysseus Elytis
You did anything to bury me, but you forgot that I was a seed.
Dinos Christianopoulos
Pray that the summer mornings are many when with such pleasure, with such joy you will enter ports seen for the first time
Constantinos P. Cavafis
Someone will remember us I sayEven in another time
Sappho