Classicists Quotes & Sayings

If I could act like This was my real life, And not some cage where I've been placed, Well then, I could tell you The truth like I used to And not be afraid of sounding fake. — Conor Oberst

I have always had a number of parts lined up in case the muse failed. A lepidopterist exploring famous jungles came first, then there was the chess grand master, then the tennis ace with an unreturnable service, then the goalie saving a historic shot, and finally, finally, the author of a pile of unknown writings- Pale Fire, Lolita, Ada- which my heirs discover and publish. — Vladimir Nabokov

The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

And what does a person with such romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics?
If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective, I think romantics are frequently the best classicists. — Donna Tartt

I think that our form of government is certainly the best - not that can be imagined - but that has ever been experienced; and, while we are sure that practice is in its favour, it would be most absurd to dream of destroying it on theory. — Charlotte Turner Smith

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. — Anton Rubinstein

Churches are just clubs for people who like to join things. — Garth Ennis

For those whose favorite season is autumn with its days of cloudless sky, of spacious and clear, far-flung panoramas - those who view nature with detachment, for whom nature's appeal is primarily pictorial, classicists as opposed to romanticists, perhaps. On such a day, one is usually excited, physically exhilarated, mentally stimulated. Only not much is left for the imagination. — Charlton Ogburn

He who carved the edges of the cosmos curved Himself into a fetal ball in the dark, tethered Himself to the uterine wall of a virgin, and lets His cells divide, light splitting all white. He gave up the heavens that were not even large enough to contain Him and lets Himself be held in a hand. The mystery so large becomes the Baby so small, and infinite God becomes infant. — Ann Voskamp

There's more truth in a grain of sand than you'll ever hear from man, woman, saint or sage. We classicists would sooner trust a potsherd. — Casper Silk

You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl. — Peter Sarsgaard

And what does a person with such a romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics? He asked this as if, having had the good fortune to catch such a rare bird as myself, he was anxious to extract my opinion while I was still captive in his office.
'If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective,' I said, 'I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.'
He laughed. 'The great romantics are often failed classicists. But that's beside the point, isn't it? — Donna Tartt

I read a newspaper article in May 1984 which predicted that syringes would one day be a major cause of the transmission of HIV. It was what I had been waiting for - a project that had a lot of the things that I liked: problem-solving, product design, campaigning, and being a bit of a big mouth pain-in-the-bum. — Marc Koska

I have been a provoker and I'll probably always be one in the public arena for the rest of my life. — Mark Lanegan

Now that music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once they were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists keep the sacred and ineffable alive, they are under siege by coarse generations whose music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occurred during their mothers' pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges? — Mark Helprin

Sometimes all thats left is faith. — Renae A. Sauter

To acquire possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria, which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania. — Theodor Mommsen