Classical Scholar Quotes

Theodor Mommsen

Richard Bentley

A. E. Housman

Benjamin Jowett

Henry George Liddell

Frederic G. Kenyon

Jane Ellen Harrison

This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrands of Greek stock later to be called Macedonians.

W. J. Woodhouse

Just as all scientific investigation is fruitless which is not pursued in a spirit of truth, so the results of all scientific endeavor are wasted if the continuity of tradition cannot be assured. It is of the very essence of science to be a co-operation and that not only of the men of the same generation, but of the generations successively.

Benjamin Farrington

It is this quality, the power of seeing order in apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men.

A man can make himself put down what comes, even if it seems nauseating nonsense; tomorrow some of it may not seem wholly nonsense at all.

Crewmates, by now we are hardly strangers to evil and hardship.
We've suffered worse. God will grant us an end to these sufferings also....
Take heart once again and dispel your fears and depression.
Maybe the day'll come when even this will be joy to remember.

If I think of Death at all it is merely as a negation of life, a close, a last and necessary chord. What I dread is disease, that is, bad, disordered life, not Death, and disease, so far, I have escaped.

Jane Ellen Harrison

The original Greek is of great use in elucidating Browning's translation of the Agamemnon.

Remark to his students

Robert Yelverton Tyrrell

Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensong and cocktails.

Nor can I do better, in conclusion, than impress upon you the study of Greek literature, which not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument.

Thomas Gaisford

I like you the better for your illusions; but it cannot be denied that they prevent you from being effective, and if you do not become effective before you cease to want anything to be done-why, what will be the good of you?

Francis M. Cornford

Philip II, at least from the time of his victory over Phocis, Athens, and their allies in 346, prepared to proclaim himself the champion of a United Greece against the barbarians.

But I know, my friends, that you may object to me what St. Irenaeus says.

Martin Joseph Routh

To a gentleman, who, at the close of a fierce dispute with Porson, exclaimed, "My opinion of you is most contemptible, Sir"; he retorted, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible."

The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by meanness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd.

Theodor Mommsen

A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.

Henry George Liddell

No serious student of the Bible in English can neglect the Revised Version without loss.

Frederic G. Kenyon

Learn just enough of the subject [metaphysics] to enable your mind to get rid of it.

Benjamin Jowett

I think that to transfuse emotion - not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader's sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer - is the peculiar function of poetry.

There were two parts of the Greek-speaking world at this time which did not suffer from revolution and did not seek to impose rule over the city states. In Epirus there were three clusters of tribal states, called Molossia, Thesprotia and Chaonia[...]the other part of the Greek-speaking world extended from Pelagonia in the north to Macedonia in the south. It was occupied by several tribal states, which were constantly at war against Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians.

N. G. L. Hammond

The smallest planets are situated nearest the sun and each other; whereas Jupiter and Saturn, that are vastly greater than the rest, and have many satellites about them, are wisely removed to the extreme regions of the system, and placed at an immense distance one from the other.

Richard Bentley