John Arbuthnot Quotes

Poets that lasting marble seek Must come in Latin or in Greek.

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

In these times when the practice of letters declines, no rather perishes in the cities of Gaul, there has been found no scholar trained in ordered composition to present in prose or verse a picture of things which have befallen.

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude.

I often teach a graduate theater seminar on Greek tragedy in performance. I usually begin by saying that no matter what technological advances occur, the wisdom of these plays will never be obsolete.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know.

Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.

Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.

The Berbers belong to a powerful, formidable, and numerous people; a true people like so many others, the world has seen - like the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans.

Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

A lot of authors see their book being banned or challenged as a badge of honor. But for me, it's nothing but frustrating and upsetting. I hear from readers that my work encouraged them to ask for help or reach out to someone about the situation they're in. When you hear stories like that on a daily basis and then hear adults call for your work to be banned, it's proof of why the stigma around these issues is so dangerous.

Honor the miraculousness of the ordinary.

Education in the true sense, of course, is an enablement to serve-both the living human community in its natural household or neighborhood and the precious cultural possessions that the living community inherits or should inherit.

Intellect is the ability to avoid belaboring the obvious.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors.

My responsibility is to save Tibet, to protect its ancient cultural heritage.

There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.

Ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the best instrument for cultivating the historical sense.

From the peak of Chimborazo (volcano) to the Pacific coast, from the Amazon rainforest to the Galapagos Islands, may you never lose the ability to thank God for what he has done and is doing for you, may you never lose the ability to protect what is small and simple, to care for your children and your elderly, to have confidence in the young, and to be constantly struck by the nobility of your people and the singular beauty of your country.

Why do we embroider everything we say with special emphasis when all we really need to do is simply say what needs to he said? Of course the fact is that there is very little that needs to be said.