Ancient Greek Life Quotes & Sayings

The greater danger is not that your hopes are too high and you fail to reach them; it's that they're too low and you do. — Wayne W. Dyer

It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer's wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

We can talk about our dreams all night, Lisette. We can talk forever, for the rest of our lives, living one adventure after another, I promise. But not now, my darling Lisette. For now, all I can think of is the brilliance of yet another ancient Greek, Sophocles. He said, 'One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life-that word is love.' I love you, Lisette. You bring my life joy I've never known. Please, marry me. — Kasey Michaels

Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that time. The era of ancient Egyptian culture lasted for several thousand years; the era of Greek antiquity for almost a thousand. In this respect, a single human life imitates the history of mankind; at first it is plunged into immobile slowness, and then only gradually does it accelerate more and more. — Milan Kundera

I cannot imagine a life without books.
Without Father's stories of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, without pirate stories and fairy tales and poems. Without the hope of another way, of freedom and adventure beyond what we have here and now. How dark life would be. — Jessica Spotswood

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out. — John Darnielle

The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus taught his students that what happens to them is not as important as what they believe happens to them. In this engaging and provocative book, Eldon Taylor provides his readers with specific ways in which their beliefs can lead to success or failure in their life undertakings. Each chapter provides nuggets of wisdom as well as road maps for guiding them toward greater self-understanding, balance, responsibility, and compassion. — Stanley Krippner

The journey of Marco Polo is the hero's journey, one that all cultures across the globe can relate to. — John Fusco

In summary, the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a training for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world. — Will Durant

In Montaigne's redrawn portrait of the adequate, semi-rational human being, it is possible to speak no Greek, fart, change one's mind after a meal, get bored with books, know none of the ancient philosophers and mistake Scipios. A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. — Alain De Botton

I felt the weight of the past at the beginning of my career of singer. — Yannick Noah

At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of the intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun
as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called civilised life. "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two." The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a model - of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character. "For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is that of childhood, when he begins to colour and mould himself by companionship with others. — Samuel Smiles

The ancient Greek view of happiness was really defined by leading a productive life: It's not about how much you have, it's about what you do with it. — Karen Duffy

It almost looks like a halo of spikes," he said. "The sun crown isn't just a Christian symbol," Emily said. "In many cultures as far back as ancient Egyptian, and including Roman and Christian, crown of thorns and halo both derive from the tradition that identifies every newly-crowned king with the sun. The halo nimbus represents the rays of the rising sun. It's a sign that its wearer plays the life-giving role of the sun in his subjects' existence. The Greek sun god Apollo was driving his chariot across the heavens wearing the sun crown when Rome was just a huddle of huts. — Kenneth Atchity

It is not we Greeks alone who are the inheritors of Greek civilisation... all, of whatever nationality, who share the ancient Greek attitude to life, are Greeks. — Leonard Cottrell

I'm glad I found you," Kane said quietly, stepping back as Avery stood.
"I think it was more like me finding you, handsome." For Kane, the sentimental memories were so strong; all he could do was stand there as they held their babies, thinking about their lives, their future,and his love for Avery.
"I can't imagine my life without you," Kane proclaimed sweetly.
"Good. I don't want you to. — Kindle Alexander

Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind's ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free. — Neel Burton

In Lovelock's view the earth was a 'super-organism,' a cybernetic feedback system that 'seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.' At the suggestion of his neighbor, author and screenwriter William Goldman, he called the system Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess. — Steven Kotler

And not one of you is to use the N-word that horrid woman said tonight to Sal. I swear I wish people were forced to make a list of names and recite them every time they use that word. "A list of the names of every black man, woman, and child hated,beaten, killed for the color of their flesh. It should be law - by God, it should be law - that if you say that word, you must then say their names. "No one wants to say one word and then realize it means so many more. — Tiffany McDaniel

My parents were only one part of my lineage. I also met a number of mentors, one of whom I nicknamed "Socrates" after the ancient Greek, and wrote about in my first book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. That book emerged in 1980, as a result of travels around the world and decades of preparation, eventually leading to 15 other books written over the years, culminating in my newest offering, The Four Purposes of Life. — Dan Millman

On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. From that, we might conclude that she was equally dumb about jazz. — Tom Robbins

Trying to pump breath into a fairy tale is as arduous and tragic as ancient Greek theatre. — Terry A. O'Neal

He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though not to Rousseau. Perhaps this was because one side of him - the side easily moved by passion - was too close to Rousseau. Instead, he approached the author of 'Candide', who was closer to another side of him - the cool and richly intellectual side.
At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun - as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun. — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control. — Mahatma Gandhi

Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis. — Peter Sloterdijk

Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings. — Wassily Kandinsky