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The wildwood is everywhere. It's inside us. It's outside us. And, of course, if you happen to be near any of the more ancient forests, not just in Europe; then, you are in touch with the source itself. But for me, it's about journeying into an inner landscape that is deeply embedded within us. We have a wild nature that most of us have forgotten, but it's there. And it's both light and dark. There are ancient atavistic things that need to be approached with care. But even these, if faced up to, can bring blessings.
John MatthewsThe Talmud derives its authority from the position held by the ancient (Pharisee) academies. The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and of Palestine, were considered the rightful successors of the older Sanhedrin...At the present time, the Jewish people have no living central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrins or the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish religion must be based on the Talmud as the final resume of the teaching of those authorities when they existed.
Louis FinkelsteinI think a lot of these terms, nationalistic things, somebody is an American, or somebody is a Frenchman, or somebody is a Jew, I don't know, it doesn't mean anything to me. You really should start augmenting these words, saying what kind. If you want to say somebody is a Jew, what do you mean by that? Does he have blonde hair? I think a lot of these ancient nationalistic and ethnic terms have kind of lost their meaning, or their meaning is so broad, it's nothing. It's like he's connected to the ancient world. Everybody is.
Ben KatchorAncient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I'd almost burst into tears. I'd seen many things in his eyes in the time that I'd known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this. Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it. I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.
Karen Marie MoningWe need modern ideas, but we also need ancient wisdom. If we deny ancient wisdom we are making a big mistake.
Geshe Kelsang GyatsoThe ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India's unique and deathless contribution to the world's treasury of knowledge. The life force, which is ordinarily absorbed in maintaining the heart-pump, must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.
Sri Yukteswar GiriPart of Sykes's motive was rooted in religiosity. A devout Catholic, he regarded a return of the ancient tribe of Israel to the Holy Land as a way to correcta nearly two-thousand-year-old wrong. That view had taken on new passion andurgency with the massacres of the Armenians. To Sykes, in that ongoing atrocity, the Ottoman Empire had proven it could never again be trusted to protectits religious minority populations. At war's end, the Christian and Jewish HolyLand of Palestine would be taken from it, and the failure of the Crusades maderight.
Scott AndersonUnderneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.
Will DurantTo me, the circle and the square where the sky and the earth, as symbolized by the ancient Oriental religions; they formed a kind of rudimentary alphabet by means of which everything could be expressed with the most limited means. They evoked prehistoric runes and the early I-Ching, or Book of Changes.
Michel SeuphorBecause drumming was recognized as an ancient source and symbol of the power of female technicians of the sacred, drumming was banned. Henceforth divinity was to be exclusively masculine. The suppression of women was directly linked to the suppression of the goddess.
Layne RedmondWhy, exactly, are scientists supposed to accord "respect" to a bunch of ancient fables that are not only ludicrous on their face, but motivate so much opposition to science?
Jerry A. CoyneThe ancient sages never put their teachings in a systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise.
Okakura KakuzoOn every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.
Henry David ThoreauAll sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
John AdamsThe surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelPerhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky.
Neil deGrasse TysonPYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.
Ambrose BierceThe integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general... The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.
Ken WilberEssential to our personal faith and development is the unmistakable knowledge that our Father and our Savior want us to succeed. They want us to return to Their presence. Because of Their love for us, They have given us resources to obtain comfort, direction, and strength for our journey home. I speak of prayer, the wonderful and sublime ability to communicate and share our concerns with the Father; the Holy Spirit, which will enlighten and comfort us; and the words of the prophets, both ancient and modern. These resources give us understanding and direction in dealing with our challenges.
Dean M. DaviesSome ruins of ancient times are much more beautiful than the best buildings of modern eras!
Mehmet Murat IldanIn looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.
Warren MacKenziethe description of lust was simple: two people learn they're compatible , attraction grows, and the ancient instinct to preserve the species kicks in.
Nicholas SparksThe art of beautiful motion is far and away the oldest. Before man learned how to use any instruments at all, he moved the most perfect instrument of all, his body. He did this with such abandon that the cultural history of prehistoric and ancient man is, for the most part, nothing but the history of the dance.
Gerard van der LeeuwTHEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
Ambrose BierceNot now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English.
Amos OzNot fooling around, not bothering nobody, just sitting here mending the Primus," said the cat with a hostile frown, "and, moreover, I consider it my duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient, inviolable animal.
Mikhail BulgakovIf we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy.
James MonroeThe only thing I would want to say is that storytelling is ancient; it's something that everybody does. Kids mustn't be in awe of it. Reading should be a joy - fun, fun, fun - not a responsibility, not something you do because society demands it, but something you do because it's a pleasure.
Natalie BabbittAmygdalin ('Laetrile')..has been employed medically for many centuries. Ancient herbal pharmacopeias recommended the bitter almond for the treatment for a variety of illnesses.
Charles MoertelMen must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.
Henry David ThoreauAt some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadnโt worked. Itโs a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbageโeven if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.
Terry PratchettAlmost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world.
N. T. WrightMarseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.
Jean-Claude IzzoThe genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he.
Henry David ThoreauGenerally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
Zadie SmithAll good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
Anita BrooknerIt is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says there is no wisdom without leisure.
William Butler YeatsI view Witchcraft as a religion that has evolved over the centuries. I do not consider Witchcraft to be a modern invention. Instead I deal with it in my writings as a Mystery Tradition with long roots to the past. It has always been my position that we don't need an ancient tradition in order to be validated. We just happen to have one.
Raven GrimassiThe importance of the development of the emotional body is hardly recognized today. We are pretty much left to our own devices to come to full adulthood, whether man or woman. Our elders may have become so denatured themselves from a lack of such nurturance that there is no longer a collective knowledge of how to guide the awakening emotional vitality and authenticity of our young people, our children. Mindfulness may contribute to a reawakening of this ancient wisdom in ourselves and in others.
Jon Kabat-ZinnVarious accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals.
EmpedoclesAnother important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.
Hu ShihMen sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.
Henry David ThoreauPrudence is one of the virtues which were called cardinal by the ancient ethical writers.
William Fleming