Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, greece, empire and/or century:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All that grave weight of America
Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it.... “Beware of me,” it says, “but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)