Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 22

For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.
Aeschylus
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Sophocles
If you try to cure evil with evilyou will add more pain to your fate.
Sophocles
Come then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.
Homer
Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours -- to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world.Love all living things whose humble task is not opposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice, and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and without exception indifferent to whatever "idea" there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald. Love also the trees, the plants, the water that runs though the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes; love the mountain, the desert, the forest, the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you.
Savitri Devi
When man will return to nature, nature will return to him.
Grigoris Deoudis
To create different work, one needs new tools and materials
Natasha Tsakos
Only super-efforts count.
G.I. Gurdjieff
We’ve now become the spectators of our own mutation. We may not die human anymore. But what makes us human?
Natasha Tsakos
In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire--in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation--that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive--belongs to the particularity of being human.
Christos Yannaras
To a wise and good man the whole earth is his fatherland.
Democritus
Having sent gifts and messengers to the oracle at Delphi, the king of the Lydians sent this message: "[The king] asks you again now whether he shall march against the Persians, and if so, whether he shall join with himself any army of men as allies." The oracle replied that, "if he should march against the Persians he should destroy a great empire."Little did he know which empire he was to destroy. It was to be his own, of course, as Cyrus the Great was ascendant.Quotations from Herodotus' Histories.
Horodotus
One could not see the Greek, the Celt, the Roman, the man of the Renaissance, not even the Victorian on a white face, for Western civilisation had moved too fast to leave any telltale signs of the past on the European skin. She thought: the white face is without history: too familiar, too unremarkable – always modern. But a look at an Indian face sends the mind travelling back a thousand years. The Olmec, the Maya, the Toltec, the Mexica were still there in the coppery skin, the prominent nose, the high cheekbones, the epicanthic fold, the brown eyes staring back from the deep well of time.
Panos Karnezis
But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others.
Polybius
He indeed who believes that by studying isolated histories he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is, as it seems to me, much in the case of one, who, after having looked at the dissevered limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has been as good as an eyewitness of the creature itself in all its action and grace.
Polybius
I know one thing, that I know nothing.
Socrates
Theatre is a voyage into the archives of the human imagination
Natasha Tsakos
It’s no longer history in the making. It’s our story we are making.
Natasha Tsakos
The truth of history lies simultaneously in the substratum of created existence (since all beings are the willed realizations of God's love); in the fulfillment of the future of history (since God's love, in His will and its expressions - namely, created existence - is identifiable with the final communion of creation with the life of God); and in the incarnate Christ (since on God's part the personification of this loving will is the incarnate Christ). Whereby Christ becomes the "principle" and "end" of all things, the One who not only moves history from within its own unfolding but who also moves existence even from within the multiplicity of created things, toward the true being which is true life and true communion.
John D. Zizioulas
Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky...
Herodotus
While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, "Come and get them.
Plutarch
The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for all time.
Thucydides
While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, "Come and get them.
Plutarch
The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for all time.
Thucydides
But if I am young, thou shouldest look to my merits, not to my years.
Sophocles
Each day makes the difference !
Katerina Kostaki
He came to read; two or three booksare lying open: history and poetry.But after just ten minutes of readinghe lets them drop. There on the sofahe falls asleep. He truly is devoted to reading-but he is twenty-three years old, and very handsome.And just this afternoon, Eros surged within his perfect limbs and on his lips.Into his beautiful flesh came the heat of passion, and there was no foolish embarrassment about the form that pleasure took..
C.P Cavafy
Everything is fair in love and art.
Christos Tsiolkas
You must study the Masters but guard the original style that beats within your soul and put to sword those who would try to steal it.
El Greco
if nothing endswhere do we begin?
Natasha Tsakos
Because the new the stories we tell, the art we make, the rockets we build, will influence the future that shapes our present.
Natasha Tsakos
If the past is no longer presentis it fiction?
Natasha Tsakos
To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.
Giorgio de Chirico
It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.
Plutarch
You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.
Maria Callas
There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.
Sappho
The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.
Hermes Trismegistus
All good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes.
Plato
if someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form? Do you think it would be a poor life for a human being to look there and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it? Or haven't you remembered that in that life alone, when he looks at Beauty in the only way what Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth no to images of virtue but to true virtue. The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.
Plato
There us a kind of flame in Crete - let us call it "soul" - something more powerful than either life or death. There is pride, obstinacy, valor, and together with these something else inexpressible and imponderable, something which makes you rejoice that you are a human being, and at the same time tremble. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
I had allowed my body to take whatever path it wished. The fact that it was guiding me and not I it gave me great pleasure. I had confidence. The body is not blind unwrought material when bathed in Greek light; it is suffused with abundant soul which makes it phosphoresce, and is left free, it is able to arrive at its own decision and find the correct road without the mind's intervention. Conversely, the soul is not an invisible airy phantom; it has taken on some body's sureness and warmth in its own right, and it savors the world with what you might call carnal pleasure, as though it had a mouth and nostrils and hands with which to caress this world. Man often lacks the persistence to maintain all of his humanity. He mutilates himself. Sometimes he wishes to be released from his soul sometimes from his body. To enjoy both together seems a heavy sentence. But here in Greece these two graceful, deathless elements are able to commingle like hot water with cold, the soul to take something from the body, the body from the soul. They become friends, and thus man, here on Greece's divine threshing floor, is able to live and journey unmutilated, intact. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
There is a kind of flame in Crete - let us call it "soul" - something more powerful than either life or death. There is pride, obstinacy, valor, and together with these something else inexpressible and imponderable, something which makes you rejoice that you are human being, and at the same time tremble. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
The soul knows full well (even though it pretends to forget many times) that it must render account to the paternal soil. I do not say "fatherland", I say "paternal soil". The paternal soil is something deeper, more modest, more reserved, and is composed of age-old pulverized bones.
N. Kazantzakis
A man who preserves his integrity no real, long-lasting harm can ever come.
Socrates
Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that . . . As a wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet it is always the same wax. So, the Soul being always the same, yet wears at different times different forms.
Pythagoras
The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.
Sophocles
...[W]hen death comes to a man, the mortal part of him dies, but the immortal part retires at the approach of death and escapes unharmed and indestructible... [I]t is as certain as anything can be... that soul is immortal and imperishable, and that our souls will really exist in the next world.
Socrates
Words are truly the image of the soul.
Basil the Great
... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.
Plato
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.Sold my soul and yeah, the truth hurts.
Marina Diamandis Marina and the Diamonds
Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?
Plato
Do you really think it's behaving like a Christian to be glad when you see death and ruin falling on your fellow men? Is that what Christ taught us?
Costas Taktsis
Man is free only within communion. If the Church wishes to be the place of freedom, she must continually place all the 'objects' she possesses, whatever they may be (Scripture, sacraments, ministries, etc.) within the communion-event to make them 'true' and to make her members free in regard to them as objects, as well as in them and through them as channels of communion. Christians must learn not to lean on objective 'truths' as securities for truth, but to live in an epicletic way, i.e. leaning on the communion-event in which the structure of the Church involves them. Truth liberates by placing beings in communion.
John D. Zizioulas
Culture cannot be a monolithically universal phenomenon without some kind of demonic imposition of one culture over the rest of cultures. Nor is it possible to dream of a universal "Christian culture" without denying the dialectic between history and eschatology which is so central, among other things, to the eucharist itself. Thus, if there is a transcendence of cultural divisions on a universal level - which indeed must be constantly aimed at by the Church - it can only take place via the local situations expressed in and through the particular local Churches and not through universalistic structures which imply a universal Church.
John D. Zizioulas
I myself have read the writings and teachings of the heretics, polluting my soul for a while with their abominable notions, though deriving this benefit: I was able to refute them for myself and loathe them even more.
Eusebius
If there is a single fact which anyone who seriously studies the history of Christianity cannot help but be struck by, it is the almost complete absence of documents regarding the man whose name this great international religion bears -- Jesus Christ. We know of him only what is told to us in the New Testament gospels, that is, practically nothing.
Savitri Devi
There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul - if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good, and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a borrowed beauty but with its own - with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth - has fitted himself to await his journey in the next world.
Socrates
She gave thee beauty—blush of fire, That bids the flames of war retire! Woman! be fair, we must adore thee; Smile, and a world is weak before thee!
Anacreon - 485 BC
It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute Beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute Beauty, and for no other reason... [I]t is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.
Socrates
Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!
Homer