Classics Curriculum Quotes & Sayings

I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Scientists are used to debating with one another about the finer points of new research. But increasingly, they find themselves battling their televisions and computer screens, which transmit ever-more-heated rhetoric from politicians, pundits, and other public figures who misinterpret, misrepresent, and malign scientific results. — Lewis M. Branscomb

TrueCrypt and Cryptainer Lite offer — Jim Stickley

We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited. It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history. — Jean Baudrillard

I don't think people should be able to swear whenever they want. I just don't want the federal government making laws about swearing. We should trust people's own instincts about what is appropriate in any given situation. — Richard Dooling

Prophet may you be!
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
when time is old and hath forgot itself,
when waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
and blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
and mighty states characterless are grated
to dusty nothing, yet let memory,
from false to false, among false maids in love,
upbraid my falsehood! — William Shakespeare

I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven-a temporary heaven-in this room for me if I chose. — Charlotte Bronte

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. — Alan Watts

All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
Sift down even.
Watch it sprout.
A mind like compost. — Gary Snyder

She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows.
Moving deliberately, she managed to get down off the stool without tangling her feet and made her way over to stand nest to my table. Her blond hair was artfully curled, and her lips were a deeply painted red. I couldn't help wondering what she was doing in a place like Anker's. — Patrick Rothfuss

Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead. — Alexei Panshin

The hearts gone bubonic with jealousy and greed, glinting through the vests and sweaters of anyone at all. — Margaret Atwood

Key is the question of where do new ideas come from. Historically, four places: government labs, big corporations, startup companies, and research universities. — Nicholas Negroponte

Snow has turned the world into a cemetery.
But the world already was a cemetery
and the snow has only come to announce it. — Roberto Juarroz

A book isn't a single, static thing with one unarguable meaning. Each reader who comes to it brings his own special knowledge, habits and attitudes. Each reader reads a different book. Each reader imagines a different story.
A few years ago, for instance, a friend of my mother's sent me a copy of a test on Rite of Passage that she had given her students. The first question read: "True or False? The theme of Rite of Passage is ... " I can't tell you what the presumed themed was, but I can tell you that I didn't recognize it. Beads of sweat leaped out of my forehead. After two more questions, I had to put the test aside. I didn't know the "right" answers. — Alexei Panshin

I really don't like to act. At the beginning, back in '51, I had to force myself to stick with it. I was real uncomfortable, real uncomfortable. — Steve McQueen

In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The forest fires are the worst disaster in California since I was elected. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

If Allah wants for a people ill, he gives them debates and takes away from them actions. — Umar