And that's how we measure out our real respect for peopleby the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerateand enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you. - Ted Hughes Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns. - Arne Jacobsen I Have been asked to tell you about the back of the north wind. An old Greek writer mentions a people who lived there, and were so comfortable that they could not bear it any longer, and drowned themselves. My story is not the same as his. I do not think Herodotus had got the right account of the place. I am going to tell you how it fared with a boy who went there. - George Macdonald

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. - Philip K Dick There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite. - Joyce Carol Oates

Creation is thus God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden Being." This means that we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature, the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. (pg. 308, Christianity and the Survival of Creation) - Wendell Berry If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and Heaven will display far more variety than Hell... a Greek Orthodox mass I once attended... seemed to [have] no prescribed behaviour for the congregation... the beauty was that nobody took notice of what anyone else was doing. - C S Lewis

If he were around this place as a professor, he could teach 'Appropriate Behavior in Classical Greek Drama,' a course that would be over before it began. - Philip Roth Quality in a classical Greek sense is how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy. - Theodore White

The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember. - David Antin The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. - John F Kennedy You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote. - Chuck Palahniuk Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When they had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving them an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy. - Chuck Palahniuk We will have have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones, these ...