Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (14).


Time, Inc. 1930 (14).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“The religion of the drama brought men into union with one another.” P. 277. ……….. “Socrates was always the seeker , asking, not teaching….” P. 279. ………. Socrates: “And now we go our ways, you to live and I to die. Which is better God only knows.” P. 281. ………. The Way of the Greeks. ………. “The Greeks always saw things as parts of a whole.”  P. 284. ………. “As they looked at human life, the protagonist was not human; the chief role was played by that which underlies the riddle of the world, that Necessity which brings us here and takes us hence, which gives good to one and evil to another, which visits the sins of the father upon the children and sweeps away innocent and guilty in fire and pestilence and earthquake shock.” P. 286. ………. “To the Greek, human beings were not chiefly different but chiefly alike.” P. 287. ………. “To Aeschylus Clytemnestra’s significance…lay in what was clear for all to see, outstanding, uncomplicated, a great and powerful nature brought to ruin by a hatred within her she could not resist because it was the instrument of fate.” P. 291. ………. “Clytemnestra’s tragedy was from without, her adversary was fate.” P. 291.

To be continued.

Monday, August 30, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (13)


Time, Inc. 1930 (13).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“Euripides looked at war and he saw through all the sham glory to the awful evil beneath….” P. 256. ………. Euripides: “Again and again he shows up the gods in accordance with the popular conception of them, as lustful, jealous, moved by the meanest motives, utterly inferior to th human beings they bring disaster upon…” p. 261. ………. Euripides: “For who knows if the thing that we call death/ Is life, and our life dying—who can know?” p. 261. ………. “One thing alone to help Athens he [Euripides] had been fitted to do: he could so write as to show the hideousness of cruelty and men’s fierce ;passions, and the piteousness of suffering, weak, and wicked human beings, and move men thereby to the compassion which they were learning to forget.” P. 262. ………. “But Euripides was the arch-heretic, miserably disturbing, never willing to leave a man comfortably ensconced in his favorite convictions and prejudices.” P. 262. ………. “The dogmatisms of each age wear out.” P. 263. ………. The Religion of the Greeks ………. “St. Paul was speaking as a Greek when he said the invisible must be understood by the visible.” P. 267. ………. “People…who, above all, were trying to find religion, not the doubtful divinities of Olympus, but a solution of life’s mystery and a conviction of its purpose and end.” P. 272. ………. “…Delphi, the shrine of Apollo the most Greek of all the gods, the artist–god, the poet and musician, who ever brought fair order and harmony out of confusion, who stood for moderation and sobriety, upon whose temple was graven the great Delphic saying, ‘Nothing in excess.’ ” P. 274. ………. “Men were set free from themselves by the drama when they all realized together the universal suffering of life.” P. 277.

To be continued.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (12).


The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton. Time, Inc. 1930 (12).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“Within himself…no man is helpless.” P. 240. ………. “Sophocles is a Greek of the Greeks, lovers ever of antithesis and of a pithy saying.” P. 241. ………. “Sophocles is direct, lucid, simple, reasonable.” P. 242. ……….”Excess—the word is not to be mentioned in Sophocles’ presence.” P. 242. ………. “Restraint is Sophocles’ as no other writer’s.” p. 242. ………. “What joy is there in day that follows day/ now swift, now slow, and death the only goal.” P. 243. ………. “Sophocles: A great tragedian and a supremely great poet, and yet a detached observer of life.” P. 245. ………. “Sophocles and Milton are the two incomparable stylists.” P. 245. ………. Euripides: The Modern Mind. ………. “Euripides is the poet of the world’s grief.” P. 252. ………. “Out of the pages written more than twenty-three hundred years ago sound the two notes which we feel are dominant in our world today, sympathy with suffering and the conviction of the worth of everyone alive.” P. 252. ……….. “The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.” P. 253. ………. Definition of “the modern mind”: “What is good in the age they live in they do not regard; their eyes are fixed on what is wrong.” P. 254. ………. “Isaiah stands with Euripides as the great example of the modern mind in literature.” P. 255.

To be continued.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (11).


Time, Inc. 1930 (11).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“The fullness in life is in the hazards of life.” P. 221. ………. “…there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.” P. 221. ………. “…Aeschylus sees mankind, meeting disaster grandly, forever undefeated.” P. 223. ………. “The innocent suffer—how can that be and God be just?” p. 234. ………. “…the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their uses; they are stops on the ladder of knowledge.” P. 235. ………. Aeschylus: “God whose law it is that he who learns must suffer.” P. 235. ………. “…Aeschylus’s insight into the riddle of the world has not yet been superseded.” P. 235. ………. Sophocles: Quintessence of the Greek. ………. “Tragic pleasure, Schopenhauer said, is in the last analysis a matter of acceptance. Acceptance is not acquiescence or resignation. Acceptance is active, not passive. Acceptance accepts life, showing clearly that thus it must be and not otherwise.” P. 238. ………. “Athens had brought to birth freedom for the world, and then straightway turned to compass the destruction of her own glorious offspring.” P. 239. ………. Sophocles: “The long days store up many things nearer to grief than joy/ …Death at last, the deliverer.” P. 239.

To be continued.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (10).


Time, Inc. 1930 (10).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“…the tragedian must seek for the significance of life.” P. 211. ………. “Tragedy’s preoccupation is with suffering.” P. 212. ………. “There is no dignity like the dignity of a soul in agony.” P. 212. ………. “Tragedy’s one essential is a soul that can feel greatly.” P. 212. ………. “The suffering of a soul that can suffer greatly—that and only that, is tragedy.” P. 213. ………. “Ibsen’s plays are not tragedies…. His plays are dramas with an unhappy ending.” P. 214. ………. “Through tragedy we catch a glimpse of a deeper and more ultimate reality than that in which our lives are lived.” P. 215. ………. Aeschylus, the First Dramatist. ………. “The strange power tragedy has to  present suffering and death in such a way as to exalt and not depress is to be felt in Aeschylus’s plays as in those of no other tragic poets.” P. 218. ………. “As with Shakespeare, we know Aeschylus only as he permits us through his plays, a doubtful matter in the case of the greatest poets whose province is the whole of life and who can identify themselves with everything there is, delight in conceiving an Iago equally with an Imogen….” P. 219. ………. “…tragedy, that mysterious combination of pain and exaltation, which discloses an invincible spirit precisely when disaster is irreparable. “ p. 221……….. “…the antagonism at the heart of the world.” P. 221.

To be continued.

Monday, August 23, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (9)


Time, Inc. 1930 (9).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

One thing you will recognize: There’s a significant difference between the Athenian democracy and the U.S. democracy: citizen responsibility.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
Xenophon: “The leader must himself believe that willing obedience always beats forced obedience, and that he can get this only by really knowing what should be done.” P. 200. ………. “No one, Cyrus always said, can be a good officer who does not undergo more than those he commands.” P. 200. ………. “Our word ‘idiot’ comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters.” P. 202. ………. “…the ideal of free individuals unified by a spontaneous service to the common life was left as a possession to the world, never to be forgotten.” P. 203. ………. The Idea of Tragedy. ………. “The special characteristic of the Greeks was their power to see the world clearly and at the same time as beautiful.” P. 206. ………. “Tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation.” P. 208. ………. “A tragedy shows us pain and gives us pleasure thereby.” P. 207. ………. “…strange contradiction of pleasure through pain….” P. 208. ………. Nietzsche: “…the reaffirmation of the will to live in the face of death….” ………. Hegel: “…the only tragic subject is a spiritual struggle in which each side has a claim upon our sympathy.” P. 209. ………. “When humanity is seen as devoid of dignity and significance, trivial, mean, and sunk in dreary hopelessness, then the spirit of tragedy departs.” P. 210.

To be continued.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (8).


Time, Inc. 1930 (8).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

One thing you will recognize: There’s a significant difference between the Athenian democracy and the U.S. democracy: citizen responsibility.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“The arrogance that springs from a consciousness of power was the sin Greeks had always hated most.” P. 172. ………. Sparta: “War was by no means a necessary evil; it was the noblest form of human activity.” P. 175. ………. “A Spartan was not an individual but a part of a well-functioning machine which assumed all responsibility for him, exacted absolute submission from him, molded his character and mind, and imbued him with the deep conviction that the chief end of man was to kill and be killed.” P. 176. ………. “The idea of the Athenian state was a union of individuals free to develop their own powers and live in their own way, obedient only to the laws they passed themselves and could criticize and change at will.” P. 177. ………. “Freedom strictly limited by self-control—that was the idea of Athens at her greatest.” P. 177. ………. “Xenophon was truly a man of his times, when poets and dramatists and historians were soldiers and generals and explorers.” P. 191. ………. “The basis of the Athenian democracy was the conviction of all democracies—that the average man can be depended upon to do his duty and to use good sense in doing it.” P. 193.

To be continued.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (7).


Time, Inc. 1930 (7).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

One thing you will recognize: There’s a significant difference between the Athenian democracy and the U.S. democracy: citizen responsibility.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“Aristotle, with no expressed or implied disapproval defines a slave as ‘a machine which breathes, a piece of animated property.’ ” P 144. ……….. Socrates: “For wisdom begins in wonder.” P. 145. ………. “Leisure meant activity in those days.” P. 145. ………. “Herodotus never judged or condemned.” P. 149. ………. “The gods…hated beyond all else the arrogance of power….” P. 158. ………. Aeschylus: “All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears/ God calls men to a heavy reckoning/ For overweening pride.” P. 158. ………. “Thucydides wrote his book because he believed that men would  profit from a knowledge of what brought about the ruinous struggle precisely as they profit from a statement of what causes deadly disease.” P. 165. ……… “…circumstances swayed by human nature are bound to repeat themselves and in the same situation men are bound to act in the same way unless it is shown to them that such a course in other days ended disastrously.” P. 165. ………. “Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is really a treatise on war, its causes and its effects.” P. 166. ………. “The motive power was greed, that strange passion for power and possession which no power and no possession satisfy” .P. 167. ………. “Power, whoever wields it, was evil, the corrupter of men.” P. 167. ……….. “…great power brought about its own destruction.”

To be continued.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (6).


Time, Inc. 1930 (6).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Ideas:
“The society he [Plato] introduces us to is eminently civilized, of men delighting to use their minds, loving beauty and elegance, keenly alive to all the amenities of life, and, above all, ever ready for a talk on no matter how abstract and abstruse a subject.” P. 95. ………. Socrates: “I am a lover of knowledge…and men are my teachers.” P. 100. ………. “If the Platonic Dialogues point to any one conclusion…it is that the Athenian did not want someone else to do his thinking for him.” P. 106. ………. Voltaire: “True comedy is the speaking picture of the follies and foibles of a nation.” P. 108. ………. “…Aristophanes is capable of more kinds of vulgarity and indecency than Shakespeare ever dreamed of.” P. 108. ………. “There is a connection between the sublime and the ridiculous.” P. 109. ………. “The freedom of speech in Athens is [by comparison] staggering to our own ideas.” P. 110. ………. “Aristophanes was amused by grand talk that covered empty content.” P. 125. ………. “Some things, however, were seen by the Athenian Aristophanes which the Englishman W.S. Gilbert was constrained not to see and this fact constitutes the chief point of difference between them.” P. 137. ………. “…Aristophanes’ audience set no limits at all.” P. 138. ………. “Aristophanes is so frank, so fearless, so completely without shame, one ends by feeling that indecency is just a part of life and a part with specially humorous possibilities.” P. 139.

To be continued.

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (5).


The purpose of this blog? To find interesting ideas in books.

Time, Inc. 1930 (5).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:
“Aristocracy: authority in the hands of the disciplined best.” P. 76. ………. “…nobility of birth has no connection with spiritual nobility.” P. 77. ………. “It has often been pointed out that the perfect expression of anything means that that thing has reached its culmination and is on the point of declining.” P. 77. ………. “Can excellence be learned?” p. 81. ………. “Power, of poetry or anything else, comes to a man be birth; it cannot be taught in the public schools.” P. 81. ………. “A gentleman will not join the staring crowd.” P. 83. ………. Pindar prays: “May God give me to aim at that which is within my power.” ………. 85. ………. “Civilization…is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling.” P. 89. ………. “…the height of civilization attained with undiminished power to act.” P. 89. ………. “We, to whom poetry, all art, is only a superficial decoration of life….”p. 91. ………. “The Greeks were preeminently realists.” P. 91. ………. “The Greeks were not tempted to evade facts.” P. 91. ………. “…it is always to be borne in mind that the Greeks did not only face facts, they had not even a desire to escape from them.” P. 93.

To be continued.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (4).


Time, Inc. 1930 (4).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:
“The Greeks were realists, but not as we use the word: they saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.” P. 58. ………. “Hebrew poetry is directed to the emotions; it is designed to make the hearers feel, not think. Therefore, it is a poetry based on reiteration.” P. 62. “The Greek poet is concerned to get his idea across, not to emotionalize it.” P. 65. “The English method is to fill the mind with beauty; the Greek method was to set the mind to work” p. 67. ………. “Pindar’s poetry is of all poetry the most like music, not the music that wells up from the bird’s throat, but the music that is based on structure, on fundamental laws of balance and symmetry, on carefully calculated effects, a Bach fugue, a Beethoven sonata or symphony.” P. 71. ……… “Shakespeare and Milton are painters with words more than they are master craftsmen in metrical effects.” P. 72. ………. “Pindar is the last spokesman for the Greek aristocracy.” P. 74. ………. “To the fathers of the Church as to Plato, no one who desired power was fit to wield it.” P. 75.

To be continued.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (3).


Time, Inc. 1930 (3).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:
Anaxagoras: “All things were in chaos when mind arose and made order.” P. 21. ………. “The Greeks said, ‘All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought.’ ” P. 21. ………. “The Greeks meant by philosophy the endeavor to understand everything there is, and they called it what they felt it to be, the love of knowledge.” P. 25. ………. “Socrates was the only man in Athens who suffered death for his opinions.” P. 27. ……….. Aristotle: “Such to man is the life according to  reason, since it is this that makes him man.” P. 30. ………. “The truth of poetry and the truth of science were both true.” P. 31. ………. Socrates: “Think this certain, that to a good man no evil can happen, either in life or in death.” P. 34. ……….. Socrates: “For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers.” P. 34. ……….. “Art is to us of the West the unifier of what is without and what is within.” P. 42. ……….. “…brush aside all obscuring, entangling superfluity, and see clearly, plainly, unadorned, what they wished to express.” P. 49. ………. “…mind and spirit in equilibrium.” P. 49. ………. “The Gothic cathedral was raised in awe and reverence to Almighty God, the expression of the aspirations of the lowly…. The Parthenon was raised in triumph to express the beauty and the power and the splendor of man….” P. 51.

To be continued.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (2)


Time, Inc. 1930 (2).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:
“Ignorance was the foundation upon which the priest power rested.” P. 11. ………. “In India the idea of truth became completely separated from outside fact; all outside was illusion; truth was inner disposition.” P. 13. ………. “Today in India the triumph of the spirit over the mind is complete, and wherever Buddhism, the great product of the Indian spirit, has prevailed, the illusoriness of all that is of this earth and the vanity of all research into its nature is the center of the faith.” P. 13. ………. “To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before.” P. 18. ………. “Joy and sorrow, exultation and tragedy, stand hand in hand in Greek literature, but there is no contradiction involved thereby.”  P. 18. ………. “Never, not in their darkest moments, do they [the ancient Greeks] lose their taste for life.” P. 18. ………. “A tomb in Egypt and a theater in Greece: the one comes to mind as naturally as the other.” P. 20. ………. “ ‘The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope’ is an old Greek definition of happiness.”

To be continued.

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Greek Way. Edith Hamailton (1)


Time, Inc. 1930 (1).

Why read It? The Athenians were a people who lived their view of truth which was many-sided and often contradictory. They accepted and lived the contradictions. They were individuals who also participated in the community. They were poets who were also soldiers. They needed to suffer in order to achieve exhilaration. The ancient Greeks’ view of life is summed up in this quotation from Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way: “The Roman games played an important part in the life of the Romans, but, as has often been remarked, the Greeks played; the Romans watched others play.” P. 320.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Robert F. Kennedy was completely distraught. His sister-in-law Jackie Kennedy gave him a copy of The Greek Way. That book enabled Robert to survive the tragedy in his life. The Greek Way provided a model for how to deal with tragedy.

Ideas:
“It is charming and instructive to find that…men of reason were not contemplative hermits.” Editor’s Preface, p. viii. ………. “Their [Greek works of art] incarnate power is such that they are not only alive themselves but give life to us.” Introduction, P. xvi. ………. “To her [Edith Hamilton] what counted most in the Greeks was their gift for life, their taste for action and for thought, their positive, unwearying search for truth, their courage in facing even the ugliest matters with candor.” Introduction, P. xvii. ………. “In their search for truth, which had for them a religious seriousness, the Greeks created the scientific spirit, which is perhaps the dominating and most impressive power in the modern world.” Introduction, CM Bowra, p. xix. ………. “None of the great civilizations that preceded them and surrounded them served as a model.” P. 5. ………. “In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they came forward as the protagonists of the mind.” P. 6. ………. “We are observing what goes on in the world around us and we are reasoning upon our observations. P. 7. ………. “In Egypt the center of interest was the dead.” P. 9. ………. “Truth is a jealous mistress and will reveal herself not a whit to any but a disinterested seeker….” P. 10.

To be continued.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Adirondack Country. William Chapman White (14).


New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954.
Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the tourists and the seasons. "As a man tramps the woods to the lake.. .he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1954, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come."
Ideas:
March: “How so much mischief and disappointment and general orneriness can be put into thirty-one days is hard to understand.” P. 301. ………. “In March a man congratulates himself on having come through the winter without a cold and thereupon comes down with the worst in three years.” P. 302. ………. “A bright afternoon in March may even lure them outdoors to practice a few casts, but a shift in the clouds can bring sudden snow and they retreat to the fire indoors, asking, ‘How Long?’ ” ………. “March brings one new activity and one cheerful note: Adirondack people watch the weather closely in the first weeks…waiting for the first sign of ‘sugar weather,’ bright sunny days to set the sap running fast in the maples, and cold crisp nights…but sugaring has been spoiled or shortened many a time by a March that stays cold, sleety, and sunless until it is too late to make decent syrup.” P. 303. ………. “Sugaring time is usually over by March 20 and still winter may hold.” P. 305. ………. “The silence of winter is gone; there is sound everywhere.”  P. 306. ………. “Hour by hour, the woods come again to life.” P. 307. ………. “…one of the miracles of the land—an Adirondack spring.” P. 307.

The end.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Adirondack Country. William Chapman White (13).


Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the tourists and the seasons. "As a man tramps the woods to the lake.. .he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1954, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come."
Ideas:
“…another October can be added to the tens, the hundreds, the millions of Octobers that have gone before over the Adirondack country.” P. 280. ………. November. “Adirondack homes are ready for the winter; storm windows are up; wood piles are stacked high.” P. 281. ………. “The new moon in the west is too puny to outdo the stars.” P. 285. ………. “In later winter cold, the air under the thick ice will snap and boom and send long cracks running from shore to shore, to tear the night until a man wakens nervously and wonders what hellish misery is loose out there on the lake.” P. 286. ………. “The first heavy snow may melt and bring that Adirondack abomination, a green Christmas….” P. 288. ………. “There is reason to believe that complaining about the passing of the old fashioned winter has been a favorite occupation in northern New York for many years stretching back to 1799.” ………. “the Adirondacks, the land of living Christmas trees.” P. 290. ………. “The winter woods, even the familiar parts, are a different world from the woods in summer.” P. 291. ………. “As the old year ends in the Adirondack country the fields and slopes are white under the December moon and the world is still; shining hillsides wall out the clatter of the world beyond.” P. 294. ………. “Today, the ice-cutters have gone the way of the blacksmiths, the livery stables, and the sleigh-bell makers.” P. 298. ………. “The deep cold of the nights sets the trees to cracking, to break the winter quiet.” P. 299. ………. “In mid-February some people go outdoors on a restless quest to seek some living proof that winter is not forever.” P. 300.

To be concluded.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Adirondack Country. William Chapman White (12).


New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954.
Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the tourists and the seasons. "As a man tramps the woods to the lake.. .he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1954, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come."
Ideas:
“By late August the woods begin to look tired and dusty.” P. 267. ………. “These [late August] are the bittersweet days and nights….” P. 268. ………. “As the old-timers leave they wonder if there will be another summer in the Adirondacks for them.” P. 269. ………. September: “In the store windows hunting equipment replaces fishing gear.” P. 270. ………. September: “A few maple leaves begin to fall; that, the Adirondack people say, means frost within a week.” P. 271. ……… September: “The temperature falls from the sixties to the low forties, almost as fast as a leaf twirls down from a tree.” P. 272. ………. October: “On these days sunlight comes filtered through the leaves and picks up yellow tones…the gold of the translucent leaves of birches and beech…like a golden room, lit from within.” P. 273.

To be continued.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Adirondack Country. William Chapman White (11).


New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954.
Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the tourists and the seasons. "As a man tramps the woods to the lake.. .he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1954, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come."
Ideas:
“In the early morning the lake lies quiet without a ripple; a noon breeze starts it shimmering; a full southwest wind in the afternoon sends little waves tumbling against the rocky shores; at twilight the water is quiet again.” P. 263. ………. “When men do come to the lake they feel at once the distance from the troubling front page of the world’s newspapers.” P. 264. ………. “As a man stands by a deserted Adirondack lake on a July day…everything is as it was last year, the year before that, as it was a century ago; the sense of timelessness is real…one summer on the lake is like any other, like summers long past and summers still to be.” P. 264. ………. “While July has the air of being able to last forever, sooner or later August brings a day that shows that summer is mortal.” P. 267. ………. “The great chemistry of autumn has begun; by morning a branch of maple at the woods’ edge shows scarlet…crickets take up the chorus that marks the coming end of summer.”

To be continued.