Antiquity Quotes
More Antiquity Quotes
There is no doubt that this tradition of a superimposed Greek house was widely believed by the Macedonians[...] There was a persistent, well attested tradition in antiquity that told of a group of Greeks from Argos -descendants of Temenus, kinsman of Heracles- who came to Macedonia and established their rule over the Makedones, unifying them and providing a royal house.
eugene n. borza— p. 80 (In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990))
I need not ask thee if that hand, now calmed, Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled, For thou wert dead, and buried and embalmed, Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled: antiquity appears to have begun Long after that primeval race was run.
horace smith— Horace Smith, Address to the Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition.
A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity.
Edward Gibbon— Vol. 1, Chap. 71.
The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.
alfred de musset— This quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement.
Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false glory, and false religion?
samuel richardson— Vol. 6, letter 45.
Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding waysOf hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers.
thomas warton— "Sonnet Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon" (1777), line 13.
"Censure," says a late ingenious author, "is the tax a man plays for being eminent." It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of comitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.
joseph addison— No. 101 (26 June 1711).
I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
Frederick II of Prussia— Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 37 from Frederick to Voltaire (June 1738)
Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
Frederick II of Prussia— Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 215 from Frederick to Voltaire (1776-03-19)
A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.
thomas fuller— The True Church Antiquary. Compare: "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion", Francis Bacon, Of Atheism.
Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.
james madison— Federalist No. 14 (1787-11-30) text from Wikisource. This quotation was used on the official invitations to the 1985 presidential inaugural of President Ronald Reagan.
The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis .
thomas mann— Ch. 5 (The Magic Mountain (1924))
'Tis not antiquity, nor author, That makes truth truth, altho' time's daughter.
Samuel Butler— Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto III
The sages of antiquity employed parables to elucidate various subjects – sometimes philosophical principles – at others moral truths at others, maxims of economy – Jesus excelled in all.
— William Bengo'. Collyer, in "Lectures on Scripture parables", p.xi
There have been snake people ( nagas or nags) and their rulers and their rulers, commonly multiheaded cobras, in Hindu mythology since antiquity.
— In page 82 (Plants of Life, Plants of Death)
No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life...
roger bacon— Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium (c. 1267) p.91
When one turns to psychological models of mental illness, one finds that the psychodynamic model of human mind and of mental disease is also of considerable antiquity. Thus, Empedocles of Agrigentum (490-430 B.C.) from whom Hippocrates took the theory of four elements, stressed the importance of emotions of love and hate as the controlling agents of human behavior and of physiological functions.
— p. 23 (A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology, (1990))
[N]either antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
— Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 215 from Frederick to Voltaire, 19 March 1776.
To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.
— Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 147
No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.
— Lord Mansfield, Case of John Money and others (1765), 19 How. St. Tr. 1027.
It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler.
richard weaver— Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 56
Lucan is the most philosophical and the most public-spirited poet of all antiquity.
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 16 (1823), p. 254
I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
— Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 37 from Frederick to Voltaire, June 1738.
[N]either antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
— Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 215 from Frederick to Voltaire, 19 March 1776.
Lao-tse may be regarded as the deepest thinker of Chinese antiquity.
— William Howitt, in The History of the Supernatural (1863), p. 321
Antiquite . en tout ce qui s'y rapporte: Est poncif, embe" tant! etc. antiquity. And everything to do with it, cliche d and boring.
Gustave Flaubert— Bouvard et Pe cuchet avec un choix des sce narios, du Sottisier, L'Album de la Marquise et Le Dictionnaire des ide es re c° ues. (published1881, translated by Geoffrey Wall,1994).
Damn the age; I will write for antiquity.
Charles Lamb— Charles Lamb, Bon Mots by Charles Lamb and Douglas Jerrold, Ed. by Walter Jerrold.
Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding ways Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.
— Thomas Warton, written in a blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon.
