Attic Quotes
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The Attic warbler pours her throat, Responsive to the
cuckoo's note, The untaught
harmony of spring.
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More Attic Quotes
A man should keep his little brain Attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 'The Five Orange Pips' (1892)
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: The mellow glory of the Attic stage; Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
Matthew Arnold— 1849 Of Sophocles. The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'To a Friend'.
Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchiefed in a comely cloud.
john milton— c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.122-5.
Our fathers have, in process of centuries, provided this realm, its colonies and wide dependencies, with a speech as malleable and pliant as Attic, dignified as Latin, masculine, yet free of Teutonic guttural, capable of being precise as French, dulcet as Italian, sonorous as Spanish, and captaining all these excellences to its service.
— 1900 The Oxford Book of EnglishVerse, preface.
Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even “at least not systematic”; but how systematically Frostian the worst of his later poems are! His good poems are the best refutation of, the most damning comment on, his bad: his Complete Poems have the air of being able to educate any faithful reader into tearing out a third of the pages, reading a third, and practically wearing out the rest.
Randall Jarrell— “To the Laodiceans”, p. 37
[Robert] Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even “at least not systematic”; but how systematically Frostian the worst of his later poems are! His good poems are the best refutation of, the most damning comment on, his bad: his Complete Poems have the air of being able to educate any faithful reader into tearing out a third of the pages, reading a third, and practically wearing out the rest.
Randall Jarrell— “To the Laodiceans”, p. 21
The leaves of these [larch] trees are like those of the pine; timber from them comes in long lengths, is as easily wrought in joiner's work as is the clearwood of fir, and contains a liquid resin, of the color of Attic honey, which is good for consumptives .
vitruvius— Chapter IX, Sec. 17
See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.
john milton— John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book IV, line 244.
The Attic warbler pours her throat
Responsive to the cuckoo's note.
— Thomas Gray, Ode on the Spring (published 1748).
You ask for lively epigrams, and propose lifeless subjects. What can I do, Cæcilianus? You expect Hyblæn or Hymethian honey to be produced, and yet offer the Attic bee nothing but Corsican thyme?
— Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XI, Epigram 42.
And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.
V. C. Andrews— Flowers in the Attic (1979)
Attic honey thickens the nectar-like Falernian. Such drink deserves to be mixed by Ganymede.
— Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XIII. 108.
What is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek?
— Aristobulus of Paneas
— Note: The late antique Jewish philosophers considered Plato and Moses, thus Judaism, in concord. Christians inherited this idea and actively learnt Greek philosophers to develop their theoretical thinkings.
Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for theeany better melody in the April woods at dawnthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awakeo'night in his comfortless Attic, might perchancebe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?
robert bridges— Book I, lines 83-87.
Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the Attic or the kitchen.
Alberto Manguel— Private Reading, p. 152
What’s thinking? You live in a grandly appointed house, but spend all your time rummaging around in the Attic for any little trinket you hadn’t known was there.
james richardson— #454 (Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001))
I'm convinced there's a small room in the Attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
peter ustinov— As quoted in Words and Their Masters (1974) by Israel Shenker, p. 170
