That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion.
The ancients dreaded death: the Christian can only fear dying.
All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.
The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.
The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point-the time before anything existed. This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it.
Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.
Bacchus, n. : A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.
The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Seek the truth in all fields, and in that search you will need at least three virtues: courage, zest and modesty. The ancients put that thought in the form of a prayer. They said, “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth – O God of truth, deliver us.
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
The Pentacle - The ancients envisioned their world in two halves - masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and Yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced there was chaos.
In ancient times, any man rising up above the common people tried to shape his life according to his principles; it is no longer like than now; it is (because) for the ancients, moral was a principle of inner life, whereas in our days, most of the time one is content to adhere to an official moral, that we recognize in theory, but that one does not care to put into practice.
When one does something, one must go back to the ancients.
Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
On the whole, the modern palette is the same as the one used by the artists of Pompeii. . . I mean it has not been enriched. The ancients used earths, ochres, and ivory-black - you can do anything with that palette.