|
e195460
|
To be really mediaeval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
|
|
humor
wilde
clothing
greeks
soul
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
bcd9197
|
I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish...well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point.
|
|
generalizations
greeks
|
Louis de Bernières |
|
e6d3d72
|
...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. [ ]
|
|
chaldeans
persians
priesthood
protestant
sect
teutons
clergy
romans
hindu
reformation
hinduism
greeks
priests
monopoly
science-vs-religion
muslim
islam
knowledge
|
John Adams |
|
28c62ed
|
"Every Greek, man, woman, and child, has to two Greeks inside. We even have technical terms for them. They are a part of us, as inevitable as the fact that we all write poetry and the fact that every single one of us thinks that he knows everything that there is to know. We are all hospitable to strangers, we all are nostalgic for something, our mothers all treat their grown sons like babies, our sons all treat their mothers a sacred and beat their wives, we all hate solitude, we all try to find out from a stranger whether or not we are related, we all use every long word we know as often as we possibly can, we all go out for a walk in the evening so that we can look over each others' fences, we all think that we are equal to the best. Do you understand?" The captain was perplexed, "You didn't tell me about the two Greeks inside every Greek." "I didn't? Well, I must have wandered off the point."
|
|
greeks
|
Louis de Bernières |
|
3973dfc
|
Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope you find you're looking at a globular cluster--a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On a less dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf in close proximity. There's an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them to be seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them. Make of it what you will.
|
|
stars
alpha-centauri
brian-fitzgerald
globular-cluster
plains-indians
pleiades
coincidence
greeks
design
perspective
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
3689df6
|
Somebody should have warned the Trojans. Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.
|
|
greeks
trojan-horse
|
David Gerrold |