Ancients

Famous quotes containing the word ancients:

“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

“We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)