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Ancient worship . . . does truth. All one has to do is to study the ancient liturgies to see that liturgies clearly do truth by their order and in their substance. This is why so many young people today are now adding ancient elements to their worship. . . . This recovery of ancient practices is not the mere restoration of ritual but a deep, profound, and passionate engagement with truthโtruth that forms and shapes the spiritual life into a Christlikeness that issues forth in the call to a godly and holy life and into a deep commitment to justice and to the needs of the poor.
Robert E. WebberI couldnโt miss Percyโs fifteenth birthday,โ Poseidon said. โWhy, if this were Sparta, Percy would be a man today!โ "Thatโs true,โ Paul said. โI used to teach ancient history.โ Poseidonโs eyes twinkled. โThatโs me. Ancient history.
Rick RiordanWhereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That's an avalanche of data.
Lee StrobelSome of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.
Frederick Soddythe ancient people perceived the world and themselves within that world as part of an ancient continuous story composed of innumerable bundles of other stories.
Leslie Marmon SilkoThe ancient intuition that all matter, all "reality," is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of he pervasive energy that animates the electron.
Peter MatthiessenWe who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.
William Makepeace ThackerayI've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston HughesHow have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!
William BlakeThe Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock.
Oscar StrausUnderneath 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 DurantAnd someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they wonโt tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until theyโre old enough to bear it; and when they learn theyโll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!
Eliezer YudkowskyWendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy.
Roberto Calasso...It is a very remarkable fact that the species of shell-fish common to Greenland and Finmark are not all inhabitants of deep or moderately deep water .... That these littoral mollusks indicate by their presence on both sides of the Atlantic, some ancient continuity or contiguity of coast-line is what I firmly believe.
Edward ForbesWe always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews. We know very well-known fixed places like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Beltzec. Instead, war can live in a couple having a spat, when we say, "That was a real war." We very rarely have the Holocaust live in the terms of today. And I think that's a problem, because it becomes ancient history.
Yann MartelI often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, โ who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, โ and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes โ each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs โ quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words.
Laurence SterneMade as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.
Aiden Wilson TozerThe ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.
Kay Redfield JamisonAtlantis: Fabled. Mystical. Golden. Mysterious. Glorious and magical. There are those who claim that it never was. But then there are also those who think they are safe in this modern world of technology and weapons. Safe from all the ancient evils. They even believe that wizards, warriors, and dragons are long dead. They are fools clinging to their science and logic while thinking it will save them. (Thrylos)
Sherrilyn KenyonMost things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology ... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.
Haruki MurakamiIf ever you come upon a grove of ancient trees which have grown to an exceptional height, shutting out a view of sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity.
Seneca the YoungerWhat I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There's a lot of tribalism in the collections.
Alexander McQueenI write about times and places I would visit in a time machine, like ancient Rome or the Wild West.
Caroline LawrenceOn a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose, Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend . . . He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law.
George MeredithIn the old days, land was important as the giver of all things. That period is gone now. Technology and brainpower are all that matters and yet conflicts over land, specially one like on the India-China border, that yields nothing, continue. This is a burden of ancient history that we continue to carry. If tomorrow there is settlement on planet Mars, we will begin to worry if others are interested.
John Kenneth GalbraithOne of the leading uses of photography by the mass media came to be called photojournalism. From the late 'twenties' to the early 'fifties' what might have been the golden age of this speciality - photographers worked largely as the possessors of special and arcane skills, like the ancient priests who practiced and monopolized the skills of pictography or carving or manuscript illumination. In those halcyon days the photographer enjoyed a privileged status.
John SzarkowskiThe progress of science, like an ancient desert trail, is strewn with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories, doctrines, and axioms which seemed to possess eternal life.
Arthur KoestlerThe new physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a universe made out of energy, everything is entangled; everything is one.
Bruce H. LiptonDoes the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
Umberto EcoA Marine should be sworn to the patient endurance of hardships, like the ancient knights; and it is not the least of these necessary hardships to have to serve with sailors.
Bernard Law MontgomeryThree of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. Itโs not the tobacco weโre after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.
Tom RobbinsHistory, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.
Tariq AliMore immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work.
Fred SaberhagenSomewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.
Rainer Maria RilkeIn some parts of the ancient world, the hawk symbolized the sun. Back when I got this, I figured if I always had the sun on me, I wouldn't be afraid of the dark
Veronica RothI'm a big history buff so to walk the streets...the ancient world like that was pretty astounding.
Leonardo DiCaprioMankind has moved away from the heart of the world to the logic of the mind, and their belief is in the chemist, the physicist, and the mathematician. Science has proven to them that all this ancient belief in ceremony is simply ignorance.
Drunvalo MelchizedekAlmost 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. WrightEngland! awake! awake! awake! Jerusalem thy sister calls! Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death And close her from thy ancient walls?
William BlakeSamhain had its origins, like many modern holidays or celebrations, in pagan times. As the sidhe-seers had been inclined to erect churches and abbeys on their sacred sites, the Vatican had been wont to โChristianizeโ ancient, pagan celebrations in an if-you-canโt-beat-them-and-donโt-wantto- join-them-rename-it-and-pretend-it-was-yours-all-along campaign.
Karen Marie MoningIn ancient times, those who followed the Way did not try to give people knowledge thereof, but kept them ignorant.
LaoziLook, this isnโt The Mummy. Itโs not like a teenaged girlโs diary could resurrect the dead or anything. Itโs just the story of her innocuous life. What on earth could an ancient girl have known that would be worth killing someone over? (Tory) Youโre asking me that question? People kill each other over a pair of shoes or for wearing the same jacket. (Acheron)
Sherrilyn KenyonAn ancient gnarled tree: Too fibrous for a logger's saw, Too twisted to fit a carpenter's square, Outlasts the whole forest.
Ming-Dao DengMy name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.
Isabel Allende