#antiquity

[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances. ↗

— Donald Hall

#aliens #antiquity #extraterrestrials #old-age #other

In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled. ↗

— Xun Zi

#bad #being #controlled #corrected #kings

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future. ↗

— Benjamin Disraeli

#conservatism #discards #future #having #makes

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom. ↗

— Robert Hall

#apt #authority #custom #enforced #favor

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#back #dead #fame #great #inheritance

To appreciate present conditions, collate them with those of antiquity. ↗

— Basil Bunting

#appreciate #conditions #present #them #those

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery. ↗

— Thomas Fuller

#inclines #little #man #popery #skill

Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine. ↗

— Pierre Loti

#astonishment #egypt #exercised #fascination #hesitation

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man. ↗

— Charles Lyell

#brought #caves #derived #discoveries #evidence

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby. ↗

— John Milton

#character #deeds #himself #his #man