Topic: English

Do you know the name of the book from which the following quotes were taken?

“…the globalization of English and English literature, law, money and values, is the cultural revolution of my generation.” P. 5. ………. “…the world wide dialect of the third millennium.” Jean-Paul Nerriere. P. 11. ………. “It argues that Anglo-American culture and its language have become as much a part of global consciousness as MS-Dos or the combustion Engine.” P. 14. ………. “You could say that English plus Microsoft equals a new cultural revolution.” P. 14. ……….. “To put it another way, every language becomes a vessel for thought and behavior. So English is like a virus that has spread round the world, carrying with it a way of looking at and expressing new experiences.” ………. “There are, it has been estimated, some 175,000 new blogs created every day.” P. 17. ………. “As I write, Google is just celebrating its one trillionth web site.” P. 17. ………. “…the English language has always been to adapt itself, like mercury, to every new contour.” P. 18. ……….. Penelope Lively: “We are waking lexicons…in a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.” P. 19.

The name of the book from which these quotes were taken will appear in the next Books and Ideas blog.

The Greek Way. Edith Hamilton (15).

Time, Inc. 1930 (15).

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:

“Pain is the most individualizing thing on earth.” P. 307. ………. “To suffer is to be alone, to watch another suffer is to know the barrier that shuts each of us away by himself.” P. 307. ………. “They suffer greatly and passionately and therefore they are greatly, passionately alive.” P. 309. ………. The Way of the Modern World ………. “…the wisest of Roman lawgivers said that the enforcement of an absolutely just law without any exceptions, irrespective of particular differences, worked absolute injustice….” P. 313. ………. “…filling our present world with turmoil and dissension…our new version of the individual’s claim against the majority’s claim.” P. 315. ………. “Everywhere we are distracted by the claim of the single man against the common welfare.” P. 315. ………. “The Greeks saw what is permanently important in man and unites him to the rest.” P. 316. ………. “The bitterest conflicts that have divided the minds of men and set family against family, and brother against brother, have…been waged for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other.” [Italics mine. RayS.] P. 317. ………. “…the result was the balance and clarity, the harmony and completeness, the word Greek has come to stand for.” P. 318. ………. “The Greeks saw both sides of the paradox of truth, giving predominance to neither, and in all Greek art there is an absence of struggle, a reconciling power, something of calm and serenity, the world has yet to see again.” P. 318.

Concluded.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.