It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one’s country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.
There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.
When we speak of beauty, we’re speaking of something we’re more or less indifferent to.
Our word ‘idiot’ comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.
Christ must be rediscovered perpetually.
We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought – that is being educated.
When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith.
The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.
No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach’s music is beautiful.
A tendency to exaggeration was a Roman trait.
When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.
The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, “Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.” The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.
The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.
They were the first Westerners. The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery; and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.
Ages of faith and of unbelief are always said to mark the course of history.
To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction.
Convention, so often a mask for injustice...
The comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique.
The Old Testament is the record of men’s conviction that God speaks directly to men.
The Greek temple is the creation, par excellence, of mind and spirit in equilibrium.
The Greeks were the first intellectualists. In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind.