Readwise quotes

• What moves him to deeds of heroism is not a sense of duty as we understand it – duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate ‘virtue’, but is in Greek aretê, ‘excellence’. (Location 890)
• he does not forget – nor yet does he obtrude – those to whom another man’s glory brings sorrow. (Location 909)
• They had the keenest appetite for activity of all kinds –physical, mental, emotional; a never-ending delight in doing things, and in seeing how they were done. (Location 917)
• the great framework in which human life must be lived, the framework which Homer expressed partly as the will and the activities of the gods, partly as a shadowy Necessity to which even the gods must bow. Actions must have their consequences; ill-judged actions must have uncomfortable results. The Gods, to the Greek, are not necessarily benevolent. (Location 927)
• The only real hope of immortality was that one’s fame might live on in song. (Location 932)
• ‘It was the gods’: not a sententious shuffling-off of responsibility, but the recognition that such things as these are part of the human lot. Beauty, like glory, must be sought, though the price be tears and destruction. (Location 963)
• the Greeks would not much have liked breathing the atmosphere of the vast modern State. They knew of one such, the Persian Empire – and thought it very suitable, for barbarians. (Location 1043)
• The Greeks thought of the polis as an active, formative thing, training the minds and characters of the citizens; we think of it as a piece of machinery for the production of safety and convenience. The training in virtue, which the medieval state left to the Church, and the polis made its own concern, the modern state leaves to God knows what. (Location 1172)
• the Ionian was much more of an individualist than the European Greek. (Location 1326)
• It is not necessarily true, for Herodotus, being a native of Carian Halicarnassus, was a neighbour of the lonians, and therefore, by the almost universal Law of Neighbours, prejudiced against them. Nevertheless, it is clearly a tale which he expected to win credence among the other Greeks. (Location 1326)
• Grace and charm are the marks of Ionian art, as strength and beauty are of the Dorian. (Location 1350)
• we must remember that Plato rejected much that is good. (Location 1357)
• While the Ionian and the Aeolian poets were freely writing about their own loves and hates, Tyrtaeus in Sparta was passionately urging his fellow-citizens to rise to the very heights of heroism against their foes in Messenia, and Alcman was composing grave though charming choral hymns to be performed by the Spartan girls at their festivals. While Ionian philosophers were finding new and exciting paths of thought, guided only by their own individual command of reason, the Dorians remained massively traditional in their ideas and their outlook. While the architects and sculptors of Ionia were seeking elegance and variety, those of the Peloponnese were striving for perfection within the narrow range of a few severe types. Ionian and Dorian represent in a very pure form two opposing conceptions of life – the dynamic and the static, the individualist and the communal, the centrifugal and the centripetal –which we can see today by looking West and then East. (Location 1394)
• The culture and the political history of the Peloponnese – the chief though not the only home of the Dorians – were both dominated by Sparta, and Sparta is not easy to appraise. (Location 1405)
• The Spartiate was forbidden to engage in agriculture, trade or professional work: he must be a professional soldier. (Location 1436)
• That many an individual Spartan did not live up to his city’s ideal is a phenomenon that we can understand readily enough, but Sparta did have an ideal, and a very exacting one: one which gave a meaning to his life, and could make him proud of being a Spartan. The personal heroism of Spartan soldiers, and Spartan women too, is both legend and fact. (Location 1471)
• the following story from Plutarch is typical. An old man wandered about at the Olympic games looking for a seat, and was jeered at by the crowd. But when he came to the place where the Spartans were sitting, every young man and many of the older ones got up to offer him a place. The crowd applauded the Spartans, whereupon the old man said with a sign, ‘All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it.’ (Location 1474)
• Nor would a Spartan have admitted that Sparta was artistically barren. Art, poiesis, is creation, and Sparta created not things in words or stone, but men. (Location 1503)
• In short, the contribution made to Greek and European culture by this one city is quite astonishing, and, unless our standards of civilization are comfort and contraptions, Athens from (say) 480 to 380 was clearly the most civilized society that has yet existed. (Location 1519)
• It seems that Attica, less disturbed than other places by the Dorian commotion, first resumed contact with the ancient culture. (Location 1535)
• the Athenians undoubtedly had a genius for statesmanship. (Location 1538)
• The Romans had many gifts, but statesmanship was not one of them. No major reform was ever carried through in Rome without civil war: the achievement of the Republic was to fill Rome with a pauperized rabble, to ruin Italy and provoke slave-revolts, and to govern the empire – or at least its richer parts – with an open personal rapacity that an Oriental monarch would not have tolerated: while the achievement of the Empire was to accept the fact that political life was impossible, and to create, in its place, a machine. (Location 1539)
• the possession of an Empire is not necessarily a sign of political success, (Location 1544)
• the most important manifestation of that genius was, I think, the general disposition of the Athenians to deal with social troubles as reasonable people, acting together, not, like children or fanatics, by violence. (Location 1549)
• The Greek tyrants were almost always aristocrats and civilized men. (Location 1613)
• He consulted the oracle at Delphi, for which he had the greatest respect (so the Greeks said), and was told that if he crossed the River Halys, the frontier between him and Cyrus, he would destroy a mighty empire. He crossed the Halys, and he did destroy a mighty empire. Unfortunately, it was his own. The foolish man had forgotten to ask which empire he would destroy. (Location 1736)
• The Asiatic master compelled obedience by torture and the lash: the Greeks took their decisions by debating and persuading – and then acted like one man: and they conquered. (Location 1831)
• It is the inescapable fact, which we so often try to escape, that everything has to be paid for, and there are many things, desirable in themselves, for which the price is too high. If this were not so, human existence would not be tragic. (Location 1905)
• They are always thinking of new schemes, and are quick to make their plans and to carry them out: you are content with what you have, and are reluctant to do even what is necessary. They are bold, adventurous, sanguine: you are cautious, and trust neither to your power nor to your judgement. (Location 1940)
• We love the arts, but without lavish display, and things of the mind, but without becoming soft. (Location 1956)
• The reason is that a people of fine quality were living in conditions which habituated them to high spiritual, mental and physical endeavour. (Location 1974)
• So much was the polis the community of citizens, so little a superhuman ‘state’, that the citizen had to find his own equipment: (Location 1989)
• all outgoing magistrates had to submit to the Assembly an account of their official acts, and their responsibility did not end until they had passed this ‘audit’. (Location 2010)
• Every citizen was, in turn, a soldier (or sailor), a legislator, a judge, an administrator (Location 2030)
• To the Athenian, the responsibility of taking his own decisions, carrying them out, and accepting the consequences, was a necessary part of the life of a free man. (Location 2040)
• an art therefore which did not handle themes of importance would have seemed to him to be childish. (Location 2042)
• That is to say, besides doing what we today expect from our government did it stimulate his intellect and satisfy his spirit? (Location 2061)
• A much more searching test was applied by philosophers like Socrates and Plato: did this form of government train men in virtue? (Location 2062)
• If war was declared, it was not a matter of ‘mobilizing the entire resources of the nation’, with endless committees and an enormous consumption of paper: it was a matter simply of every man going home for his shield, his spear and his rations, and reporting for orders. (Location 2069)
• From this it has been inferred by many who have not read Aristophanes but have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that the culture of Attica was the work of a leisured class, supported by slaves. This belief may be consoling to us, who have so much more economic power and so much less real civilization, but it is essentially false. (Location 2079)
• To understand is not necessarily to pardon, but there is no harm in trying to understand. (Location 2101)
• we must give due importance, and no more, (Location 2119)
• it is not evident that machinery has in general much increased our leisure. It has enormously increased the complications of life, so that of the time saved us by machine-production a great deal is taken away from us by the extra work which a machine-age creates. (Location 2124)
• We cannot afford to take time off in the middle of the day like this. No: but we get up at seven, and what with shaving, having breakfast, and putting on the complicated panoply which we wear, we are not ready for anything until 8.30. The Greek got up as soon as it was light, shook out the blanket in which he had slept, draped it elegantly around himself as a suit, had a beard and no breakfast, and was ready to face the world in five minutes. The afternoon, in fact, was not the middle of his day, but very near the end of it. (Location 2135)
• A calamity has befallen you, and you cannot persevere in the policy you chose when all was well: it is the weakness of your resolution that makes my advice seem to have been wrong. It is the unexpected that most breaks a man’s spirit. (Location 2260)
• This debate only confirms me in my belief that a democracy cannot rule an Empire. (Location 2292)
• The attempt is suggested by Hope; Desire assists Hope; Chance urges men on the more, by sometimes giving unexpected success, and so encouraging men to run risks beyond their resources. (Location 2322)
• The Greek was not happy unless he could relate the particular instance to general law; it is in generality that the truth can be seen and tested. (Location 2352)
• The polis was made for the amateur. Its ideal was that every citizen (more or less, according as the polis was democratic or oligarchic) should play his part in all of its many activities (Location 2576)
• The first is that the poleis should conduct their affairs with an intelligence and a restraint of which the human race has not yet shown itself capable. (Location 2589)
  • Note: The first of three conditions that would allow a polis to succeed, any of which can be satisfied.
• military tactics were becoming specialized beyond the reach of the citizen-soldier and the citizen-general. (Location 2612)
• For generations Greek morality, like Greek military tactics, had remained severely traditional, based on the cardinal virtues of Justice, Courage, Self-restraint, and Wisdom. (Location 2648)
• By the end of it, nobody knew where he was; the clever were turning everything upside-down, and the simple felt that they had become out of date. (Location 2654)
• A sense of the wholeness of things is perhaps the most typical feature of the Greek mind. (Location 2710)
• The modern mind divides, specializes, thinks in categories: the Greek instinct was the opposite, to take the widest view, to see things as an organic whole. (Location 2714)
• The sharp distinction which the Christian and the Oriental world has normally drawn between the body and the soul, the physical and the spiritual, was foreign to the Greek – at least until the time of Socrates and Plato. (Location 2772)
• The Greek made physical training an important part of education, not because he said to himself, ‘Look here, we mustn’t forget the body’, but because it could never occur to him to train anything but the whole man. (Location 2776)
• But their standard, in all their activities, was a sane balance. It is difficult to think of a Greek who can be called a fanatic; (Location 2829)
• The Greek never doubted for a moment that the universe is not capricious: it obeys Law and is therefore capable of explanation. (Location 2840)
• Here we meet a permanent feature of Greek thought: the universe, both the physical and the moral universe, must be not only rational, and therefore knowable, but also simple; the apparent multiplicity of physical things is only superficial. (Location 2887)
• Such, I think, is the origin of the logic and clarity which are so obvious in the Greek sense of form. The artist has a very clear idea of what he is going to say, and is in complete command of his material. Equally obvious is the Greek love of symmetry. This has some interesting ramifications; we find the feeling for pattern and balance wherever we look. (Location 2992)
• In the good writers or speakers antithesis comes directly from the acuteness of intelligence which at once analyses an idea into its component parts. (Location 2997)
• An envious man from the very unimportant island of Seriphus told Themistocles that he owed his fame not so much to his own merit as to the fact that he happened to be an Athenian. ‘There is something in that,’ said Themistocles; ‘I should not have become famous had I been a Seriphian, nor would you, had you been an Athenian.’) (Location 2999)
• Therefore the Greek tended to impose pattern where it is in fact not to be found, just as he relied on Reason where he would have been better advised to use observation and deduction. (Location 3010)
• The human mind is much given to the thrilling exercise of leaping across chasms as if they were not there. (Location 3066)
• They had never told me, and I had never suspected, that Numbers play these grave and beautiful games with each other, from everlasting to everlasting, independently (apparently) of time, space and the human mind. (Location 3082)
• the history of man has shown since how much easier it is to master the physical than the moral universe. (Location 3108)
• That is to say, there is no essential connexion between theology and morality. (Location 3152)
• There was an enormous number of existing religious practices and vaguely-remembered traditions which called for explanation, and as the truth had been forgotten, fiction took its place. (Location 3184)
• Very often the earlier deity was a goddess, in which case it was natural to make her the wife of the incoming god. (Location 3201)
• Greek polytheism, then, was ‘natural’ religion, made more complex and polytheistic by the fragmentation of the Greek race, and by the fusion, at least in parts of Greece, of two different kinds of religion, a religion that had to do with the social group, and a religion that had to do with nature-worship. (Location 3220)
• It is the attack made on the artist by the philosopher who will not admit that there is any other road to the truth but his own. (Location 3237)
• Tidiness is so excellent a thing in itself. (Location 3333)
• Two details which certainly are typical are the absence of breakfast and the close connexion between city and country life. (Location 3352)
• the very acute and amusing Characters of Theophrastus, of which no one interested in humanity ought to remain in ignorance for ten minutes longer than he can help. (Location 3441)
• ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ (Location 3446)
• in a world like this a man without friends was defenceless indeed. (Location 3475)
• One is obvious enough, that more scoundrels are met in the law-courts than in general society. (Location 3529)
• All classical Greek art had a very austere standard of relevance. (Location 3612)
• To the ordinary Athenian the ability to read was comparatively unimportant; conversation, debate, the theatre, much more than the written word, were the real sources of education. (Location 3751)
• ’Men do indeed speak ill of those occupations which are called handicrafts, and they are quite rightly held of little repute in communities, because they weaken the bodies of those who make their living at them by compelling them to sit and pass their days indoors. (Location 3882)
• But when the body becomes effeminate the mind too is debilitated. (Location 3884)
• the opposite of a bad man is not a good man, but a different sort of bad man. (Location 3950)
• This it is which does most to explain the unashamed desire for revenge. A man owes it to himself to be revenged; to put up with an injury would imply that the other man was ‘better’ than you are. (Location 4005)
• So, at every hand we meet the idea of ‘contest’, agôn. Those things that we weakly translate ‘Games’ were, in Greek, agônes: the dramatic festivals were agônes – contests in which poet was pitted against poet, actor against actor, chorêgus against choregus. Our word ‘agony’ is a direct development from agôn; it is the anguish of the struggle that reveals the man. (Location 4010)