Quotes on Greece

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.

Why should I fear death?_x000D_ If I am, then death is not._x000D_ If Death is, then I am not._x000D_ Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?_x000D_ Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear._x000D_ Religious tyranny did domineer._x000D_ At length the mighty one of Greece_x000D_ Began to assent the liberty of man.

Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy . . . great improvement . . . were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.

Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance

There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.

Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.

Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.