Famous quotes containing the words ancient, literary, evidence and/or historians:
“Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.”
—Will Durant (1885–1981)