Classical Civilization Quotes

Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.

The instrument of expansion of Classical civilization was a social organization, slavery.

I guess you could say Alexander the Great was a man who completely transported me and moved me and inspired me because of his idealism, and I'd go back to the Greeks, and I always liked Homer and all the philosophers and their way of thinking and their concept of honor. I think their concept of honor does apply to the modern age, and certain people that walk around are pre-Christian.

Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.

Antiquity is a species of aristocracy with which it is not easy to be on visiting terms.

In the ancient world and, above all, among the Greeks, human nature was held in high esteem.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece.

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.

Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.

Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!

The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.