Famous quotes containing the words ancient, greek, grammar, tables, contracted and/or verbs:
“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;Mnot be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Here Greek and Roman find themselves
Alive along these crowded shelves;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
And Chaucer paints anew his age.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The evening falters. Couples in their coats
Are leaving gaps already, and the rest
Move tables closer.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“He crafted his writing and loved listening to those tiny explosions when the active brutality of verbs in revolution raced into sweet established nouns to send marching across the page a newly commissioned army of words-on-maneuvers, all decorated in loops, frets, and arrowlike flourishes.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)