Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 19

Now if BECOMING history is the particularity of the Son in the economy, what is the contribution of the Spirit? Well, precisely the opposite: it is to liberate the Son and the economy from the bondage of history. If the Son dies on the cross, thus succumbing to the bondage of historical existence, it is the Spirit that raises him from the dead. The Spirit is the BEYOND history, and when he acts in history he does so in order to bring into history the last days, the ESCHATON. Hence the first fundamental particularity of Pneumatology is its eschatological character. The Spirit makes of Christ an eschatological being, the 'last Adam.
John D. Zizioulas
For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it.
Hippocrates
He’d never thought of death like that, like it’s some sort of other life that you can hope for, dream of. Escape to. That it can rescue you.
M.C. Frank
It is impossible for me to remember how many days or weeks went by in this way. Time is round, and it rolls quickly.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Impossible is only two letters away from being Possible.
Natasha Tsakos
My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Be true to thine own self
Socrates
My mother always said - "Never run after a man or a bus - there is always another one coming.
Tessa Kiros
It is possible the world is divided into three genders - there are men, there are women and then there are women who choose to have nothing to do with children. How about men without children, he answered quickly, aren't they also different from fathers? She shook her head firmly, daring him to contradict her: no, all men are the same.
Christos Tsiolkas
The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.
Plato
O Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether gold is counterfeit but, when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good.
Euripides
My old friend, what are you looking for?After years abroad you’ve come backwith images you’ve nourishedunder foreign skiesfar from you own country.’‘I’m looking for my old garden;the trees come to my waistand the hills resemble terracesyet as a childI used to play on the grassunder great shadowsand I would run for hoursbreathless over the slopes.’‘My old friend, rest,you’ll get used to it little by little;together we will climbthe paths you once knew,we will sit togetherunder the plane trees’ dome.They’ll come back to you little by little,your garden and your slopes.’‘I’m looking for my old house,the tall windowsdarkened by ivy;I’m looking for the ancient columnknown to sailors.How can I get into this coop?The roof comes to my shouldersand however far I lookI see men on their kneesas though saying their prayers.’‘My old friend, don’t you hear me?You’ll get used to it little by little.Your house is the one you seeand soon friends and relativeswill come knocking at the doorto welcome you back tenderly.’‘Why is your voice so distant?Raise your head a littleso that I understand you.As you speak you growgradually smalleras though you’re sinking into the ground.’‘My old friend, stop a moment and think:you’ll get used to it little by little.Your nostalgia has createda non-existent country, with lawsalien to earth and man.’‘Now I can’t hear a sound.My last friend has sunk.Strange how from time to timethey level everything down.Here a thousand scythe-bearing chariots go pastand mow everything down
Giorgos Seferis
For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother
Homer
Theatre is pure teleportation by means of suspension. It’s a voyage into the archives of the human imagination. A passport to all what ifs.
Natasha Tsakos
That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.
Stefanos Livos
but sing no more this bitter tale that wears my heart away
Homer
She felt her in her heart all the time now, yearning for her lost love and lamenting for past mistakes. The Lady’s grief was overwhelming sometimes, making Sofia sad for no reason at all, especially at night when the world around her grew quiet and there were no distractions.
Effrosyni Moschoudi
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
Socrates
…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.
Homer
And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!
Homer
When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.
Plutarch
Which would you choose if you could:pleasure for yourself despite your friendsor a share in their grief?
Sophocles
I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief
Euripides
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
Sophocles
Do not grieve so much for a husband lost that it wastes away your life.
Euripides
At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a two-fold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy children made desolate.
allimachus and Lycophron CXLII
Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.
Euripides
All men are more concerned to recover what they lose than to acquire what they lack.
Aesop
He imagined forgiveness was like flying, that it made you soar. He imagined that it looked like an eagle, a silver bolt in the sky, that it was pure light.
Christos Tsiolkas
May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene
Sophocles
May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene, Antigone (The Theban Plays) by Sophocles
Sophocles
In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.
Epictetus
They gave me their names, asking me to forgive them and to pray for them. I would later learn how important it is not to keep a grudge against those who have died. In a mysterious way we 'hold them back' and they suffer if we do not forgive them. We keep them from the higher realm; they seem to remain chained and do not reach Heaven. We must forgive them.
Vassula Ryden
Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on
Homer
One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.
Socrates
Remember, never to fear the power of evil more than your trust in the power and love of God.
Hermas one of the Seventy
Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.
Democritus
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
Aeschylus
Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
Aesop
It's during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Aristotle Onassis
No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.
Plato
The ticket to Utopia ia real Love that springs from within us.
Katerina Kostaki
Light is the shadow of god
Plato
With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.
Nikos Kazantzakis
I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.
Nikos Kazantzakis
By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning.
Nikos Kazantzakis
You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth
Odysseus Elytis
Education isn't what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes...The power to learn is present in everyone's soul and...the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body... Then education is the craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. it isn't the craft of putting sight into the soul. Education take for granted that sight is there but that it isn't turned the right way or looking where it ought to look, and it tries to redirect it appropriately.
Plato
Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato
My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and guided by this teaching is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.
Hermes Trismegistus
It is always in season for old men to learn.
Aeschylus
The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
Hippocrates
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
Nikos Kazantzakis
‎Most of the times, we feel more enjoyment from just recalling good memories of the past rather from those moments we lived,not because we did not have a good time but because realization has come late.
Dionisis Agelakis
But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence.
Plutarch
One who prays ceaselessly is one who combines prayer with work and work with prayer.
Origen
I felt sorry for the inhabitants and went into the forest to admonish the wolf in God's name not to eat any more sheep. I called him, he came—and do you know what his answer was? 'Francis, Francis,' he said, 'do not destroy God's prescribed order. The sheep feeds on grass, the wolf on sheep—that's the way God ordained it. Do not ask why; simply obey God's will and leave me free to enter the sheepfolds whenever I feel the pinch of hunger. I say my prayers just like Your Holiness. I say: "Our Father who reignest in the forests and hast commanded me to eat meat, Thy will be done. Give me this day my daily sheep so that my stomach may be filled, and I shall glorify Thy name. Great art Thou, Lord, who hast created mutton so delicious. And when the day cometh that I shall die, Grant, Lord, that I may be resurrected, and that with me may be resurrected all the sheep I have eaten—so that I may eat them again!"' That, Brother Leo, is what the wolf answered me.
Nikos Kazantzakis
It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard.
Aesop
Fear of dying must surely mean fear of how one dies. If one can be assured of a painless death, how can one fear it, unless one is a religious fanatic with a very guilty conscience?
Dimitris Mita
Wish' is the most powerful thing in the world. Higher than God.
G.I. Gurdjieff