6 notes

A Greek word meaning TO DESTROY has the same sound as HELEN’s name. Obviously, Hell is the English equivalent of the pun. But I prefer not to use it, even at the expense of fidelity. Hell seems nowadays to lack dignity.

62 notes

There was nothing the ancient Greeks did not poke their noses into, no experience they shunned, no problem they did not attempt to solve. When the world was still young, they set off at the first light and returned early from the agora, their arms full and their carts loaded down with every purchase, domestic and foreign, natural and artificial, they could lay their hands on. Whatever we experience in our day, whatever we hope to learn, whatever we most desire, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back.

52 notes

[We read] the ‘Iliad’ […] because all life is a battle, the ‘Odyssey’ because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.

3 notes

What would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks.They might realize on that happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is) when common man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved- that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as the guilty.