Classical Literature Quotes

Right out of school, I did this show called 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.' It is based on a classical text with new music - not necessarily confined by a certain genre. It was a diverse, interesting group of musicians, actors, nonactors, and singers all creating this thing that is bigger than all of us.

Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.

I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.

Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.

I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.

My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.

I have read the Aeneid through more often than I have read any long poem.

Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.

Every novel is a debtor to Homer.

At NSD, I had an amazing experience learning everything from stagecraft to western drama and Shakespeare, Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekov.

All men begin their learning with Homer.

We cannot deny that 80 or even 90 percent of the spiritual treasures from the past 3,000 years have come from Europe. There is no other Greek theatre anywhere else in the world. There is no other Shakespeare, Dante or Cervantes.

Our Euripides the human, With his droppings of warm tears, and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.

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

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings/Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun/For my mean Pen are too superior things.

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.

I don't do Shakespeare. I don't talk in that kind of broken English.

When I was nine, I started reading Homer. I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, before I had to go to school, in third or fourth grade, and, for several hours, I would read 'The Iliad' or 'The Odyssey.'

The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.

One should indeed read Pope with his notes available, in the Twickenham edition possibly, to see what a vast amount he did understand about Homer.

Our heritage as actors goes back thousands of years, and we have to feel as comfortable in the clothes, and the language of Sophocles as we do in our sneakers.

The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer imitated.

I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.