People from Alexandria

"You won't find a new country, won't find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You'll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses. You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere: there's no ship for you, there's no road. Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner, you've destroyed it everywhere in the world."

"When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, wish always that your course be long, full of adventure, full of lore."

"Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires glowing openly in eyes that looked at you, trembling for you in voices."

"People of Kommagini, let the glory of Antiochos, the noble king, be celebrated as it deserves. He was a provident ruler of the country. He was just, wise, courageous. In addition he was that best of all things, Hellenic — mankind has no quality more precious: everything beyond that belongs to the gods."

"I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details.And, for me, the whole of you has been transformed into feeling."

"The Spartans weren't to be led and ordered around like precious servants. Besides, they wouldn't have thought a pan-Hellenic expedition without a Spartan king in command was to be taken very seriously. Of course, then, "except the Lacedaimonians." That's certainly one point of view. Quite understandable."

"The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight — Golden and warm and lively little candles."

"I look before me at my lighted candles, I don’t want to turn around and see with horror How quickly the dark line is lengthening, How quickly the candles multiply that have been put out."

"And from this marvellous pan-Hellenic expedition, triumphant, brilliant in every way, celebrated on all sides, glorified incomparable, we emerged: the great new Hellenic world."

"He wasn’t completely wrong, poor old Gemistus (let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like), in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again."

"Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions. All of morality’s laws – poorly understood and applied – are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners."

"What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?The barbarians are due here today."

"Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold?Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians."

"Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come. And some of our men who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution."

"I'm practically broke and homeless. This fatal city, Antioch, has devoured all my money: this fatal city with its extravagant life."

"Whatever job they give me, I'll try to be useful to the country. That's what I intend. But if they frustrate me with their manoeuvres — we know them, those smart operators: no need to say more here — if they frustrate me, it's not my fault."

"One of the three will want me anyway. And my conscience is quiet about my not caring which one I choose: the three of them are equally bad for Syria. But, a ruined man, it's not my fault. I'm only trying, poor devil, to make ends meet. The almighty gods ought to have taken the trouble to create a fourth, a decent man. I would gladly have gone along with him."

"The frivolous can call me frivolous. I’ve always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils."

"The holy Cross goes forward; it brings joy and consolation to every quarter where Christians live; and these God-fearing people, elated, stand in their doorways and greet it reverently, the strength, the salvation of the universe, the Cross."

"The empire is delivered at last. The vile, the appalling Julian reigns no longer."

"He knows he’s aged a lot: he sees it, feels it. Yet it seems he was young just yesterday. So brief an interval, so very brief. And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him, how he always believed — what madness — that cheat who said: “Tomorrow. You have plenty of time.”"

"He remembers impulses bridled, the joy he sacrificed. Every chance he lost now mocks his senseless caution."

"And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk."

"The love they felt wasn’t, of course, what it once had been; the attraction between them had gradually diminished, the attraction had diminished a great deal. But to be separated, that wasn’t what they themselves wanted."

"Of what’s to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever."

"Don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive — don’t mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving. Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say it was a dream, your ears deceived you: don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these."

"When they saw Patroklos dead — so brave and strong, so young — the horses of Achilles began to weep; their immortal nature was upset deeply by this work of death they had to look at."

"Immoral to a degree — and probably more than a degree — they certainly were. But they had the satisfaction that their life was the notorious life of Antioch, delectably sensual, in absolute good taste. To give up all this, indeed, for what? His hot air about the false gods, his boring self-advertisement, his childish fear of the theatre, his graceless prudery, his ridiculous beard."

"Things impolitic and dangerous: praise for Greek ideals, supernatural magic, visits to pagan temples. Enthusiasm for the ancient gods"

"The matter, says Mardonios, has gone too far, the talk it has aroused must be stopped at all cost. — So Julian goes to the church at Nicomedia, a lector again, and there with deep reverence he reads out loud passages from the Holy Scriptures, and everyone marvels at his Christian piety."

"His friends weren’t Christians; that much was certain. But even so they couldn’t play as he could (brought up a Christian) with a new religious system, ludicrous in both theory and application. They were, after all, Greeks. Nothing in excess, Augustus."

"That we’ve broken their statues, that we’ve driven them out of their temples, doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead. O land of Ionia, they’re still in love with you, their souls still keep your memory."

"He who hopes to grow in spirit will have to transcend obedience and respect. He'll hold to some laws but he'll mostly violate both law and custom, and go beyond the established, inadequate norm. Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him. He won't be afraid of the destructive act: half the house will have to come down. This way he'll grow virtuously into wisdom."

"Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet — so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of them granted a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings."

"A month passes by and brings another month. Easy to guess what lies ahead: all of yesterday’s boredom. And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow."

"Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers."

"And in Spain Galba secretly musters and drills his army — Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year."

"The people going by would gaze at him, and one would ask the other if he knew him, if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger. But some who looked more carefully would understand and step aside; and as he disappeared under the arcades, among the shadows and the evening lights, going toward the quarter that lives only at night, with orgies and debauchery, with every kind of intoxication and desire, they would wonder which of Them it could be, and for what suspicious pleasure he had come down into the streets of Selefkia from the August Celestial Mansions."

"Just to be on the first step should make you happy and proud. To have come this far is no small achievement: what you have done is a glorious thing. Even this first step is a long way above the ordinary world. To stand on this step you must be in your own right a member of the city of ideas. And it is a hard, unusual thing to be enrolled as a citizen of that city. Its councils are full of Legislators no charlatan can fool."

"Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be."

"If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence."

"Honor to those who in the life they lead define and guard a Thermopylae. Never betraying what is right, consistent and just in all they do but showing pity also, and compassion; generous when they are rich, and when they are poor, still generous in small ways, still helping as much as they can; always speaking the truth, yet without hating those who lie."

"One candle is enough. Its gentle light will be more suitable, will be more gracious when the Shades arrive, the Shades of Love."

"It will be a great relief when a window opens. But the windows are not there to be found — or at least I cannot find them. And perhaps it is better that I don’t find them. Perhaps the light will prove another tyranny. Who knows what new things it will expose?"

"Try to keep them, poet, those erotic visions of yours, however few of them there are that can be stilled. Put them, half-hidden, in your lines."

"From all I did and all I said let no one try to find out who I was."

"From my most unnoticed actions, my most veiled writing — from these alone will I be understood."

"Κατόπι — στὴν τελειοτέρα κοινωνία — κανένας ἄλλος καμωμένος σὰν ἐμένα βέβαια θὰ φανεῖ κ’ ἐλεύθερα θὰ κάμει."

"The greatest gods of our glorious Greece appeared before you. And if they left, don’t think for a minute that they were frightened by a gesture."

"He was a quiet, gentle man, a man who loved peace (his country had suffered much from the wars of his predecessor), he behaved graciously toward everyone, humble and great alike. Never high-handed, he always sought advice in the kingdom’s affairs from serious, experienced people. Just why his nephew killed him was never precisely explained."

"On hearing about powerful love, respond, be moved like an aesthete. Only, fortunate as you’ve been, remember how much your imagination created for you."

"How much we’ll tell down there, how much, and how very different we’ll appear. What we protect here like sleepless guards, wounds and secrets locked inside us, protect with such great anxiety day after day, we’ll disclose freely and clearly down there."

"As the shores of Ithaca gradually Faded away behind him And he sailed swiftly westward Toward Iberia and the Pillars of Hercules, Far from every Achaean sea, He felt he was alive once more, Freed from the oppressive bonds Of familiar, domestic things. And his adventurous heart rejoiced Coldly, devoid of love."

"Now the longed-for signal has appeared. Yet when happiness comes it brings less joy than one expected. But at least we've gained this much: we've rid ourselves of hope and expectation."

"So let's not exaggerate. The light is good; and those coming are good, their words and actions also good. And let's hope all goes well. But Argos can do without the house of Atreus. Ancient houses are not eternal."

"Of course many people will have much to say. We should listen. But we won't be deceived by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great. Someone else indispensable and unique and great can always be found at a moment's notice."

"We for the best will strive. And always more defective, more perplexing than before, shall all things fare; until, as in a mist, we stray bewildered. Then we shall desist. For in that helpless hour the gods attend. They always come, the gods. They will descend from their machines, and straightway liberate some and as suddenly exterminate others; and having reformed us, they will go. — And afterward, one will act so; and so another; and in time the rest will do as they needs must. And we shall start anew."

"Cavafy has three principal concerns: love, art, and politics in the original Greek sense. … As a witness, Cavafy is exceptionally honest. He neither bowdlerizes nor glamorizes nor giggles. The erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived affairs. Love, there, is rarely more than physical passion, and when tenderer emotions exist, they are almost always one-sided. At the same time, he refuses to pretend that his memories of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt."

"Cavafy's attitude toward the poetic vocation is an aristocratic one. His poets do not think of themselves as persons of great public importance and entitled to universal homage, but, rather, as citizens of a small republic in which one is judged by one's peers and the standard of judgment is strict."

"Cavafy is intrigued by the comic possibilities created by the indirect relation of poets to the world. While the man of action requires the presence of others here and now, for without the public he cannot act, the poet fabricates his poem in solitude."

"In his poems about the relations between Christians and Pagans in the age of Constantine, Cavafy takes no sides. Roman Paganism was worldly in the sense that the aim of its ritual practices was to secure prosperity and peace for the state and its citizens. … after Constantine, it was the Christian who had a better chance than the Pagan of getting on in the world, and the Pagan, even if not persecuted, who became the object of social ridicule."

"From his biographers we know how cautious and reserved Cavafy was, how reluctant to talk about himself. Although he frequented cafes and saw many people, his loneliness remained unalleviated. This poem is a rather unusual confession for the poet, especially since it comes so early in his life: Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner, you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. The "City" is a summing up of the poet's life, starting with the desire for escape, for a journey, the last hope for a new beginning and ending with the realization that the journey is impossible because once a life has been ruined in one city it will be the same in any other. What separates him from society will not change from city to city."

"He has the strength (and of course the limitations) of the recluse, who, though not afraid of the world, always stands at a slight angle to it."

"He wrote consistently but almost never published through traditional means. There is nothing more detrimental to art, he maintained, than succumbing to “how the public thinks and what it likes and what it will buy.” … Whether Cavafy is describing an ancient political intrigue or an erotic encounter that occurred last week, his topic is the passage of time. … Earlier translators have, to varying degrees, rightly emphasized the prosaic flatness of Cavafy’s language; the flatness is crucial to the emotional power of the poems, since it prevents their irony from seeming caustic, their longing from seeming nostalgic."

"The focal point of Greek-American cultural interest has definitely shifted in recent decades. Where formerly there was a somewhat affected and strained focus on classical Hellas, the contemporary awareness is much more in tune with the literature of modern Greece. This shift has almost been entirely due to the increasing availability of English translations of modern Greek writings, for not many American-born Greeks comfortably read novels or poetry in the original Greek. The beginnings of the new mood can be traced to the translations of the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis in the 1950s. These also stimulated interest in other Greek writers, notably the poets Constantine P. Cavafy, a product of the Greek diaspora in Alexandria, Egypt, and George Seferis, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1963."

"He was a man who starts at a certain age with all signs showing that he's unable to produce anything of importance. And then, by refusing and refusing things which are offered him, in the end he finds, he sees, as they say; he becomes certain that he's found his own expression. It's a splendid example of a man who, through his refusals, finds his way."

"I love Britain. . . Ethics and morals count in Britain like nowhere else in the world."

"[On religion] When we die, our souls still live. If you are a gangster or a bastard or a crook your soul inhabits a donkey or something terrible."

"[On wanting to become Britain's PM] If I have British passport - why not? This is my country now. And I am very popular. I have a warehouse full of letters of support. You can see them."

"If this planet lasts for another thousand years people will still be talking about the terrible event we are now living through."

"I am not resting until I die. I am not doing this for myself, but for the country."

"They are the main two. I don't think the Queen is important. The Duke of Edinburgh runs the country behind the scenes; he is the actual head of the Royal Family."

"I am not talking to you, you are bloody idiot, you are part of the establishment, you work for MI6."

"[He] did more good in the world than all his critics rolled together. [...] And I'm very sorry that he's dead because he was a life-enhancing figure and he tremendously supported this country. He believed in it."

"The fact is that if you talk to the people who actually knew him, who worked for him, who were his customers, they have a completely different view from people who sit in ivory towers and take pot shots at him."

"Fayed did not want the facts of his background and his take-over of Harrods to come out. He bribed politicians to try to ensure a cover-up. When that failed, and the damning DTI report was finally published, Fayed became angry because his bribes had not worked."

"All these matters mean, you may think, that Mr al-Fayed's appreciation of what is fact and what is fiction and what is truth and what is fantasy is warped."

"When Francesca Bettermann was hired, she had to take an H.I.V. test—women working close to the chairman had to undergo full internal exams and be grilled on their entire gynecological histories—and her handwriting was analyzed."

"According to former employees, Fayed regularly walked the store [Harrods] on the lookout for young, attractive women to work in his office. Some were asked to go to Paris with him. Good-looking women were given gifts and cash bonuses almost before they understood that they were being compromised. "Come to Papa," he would say. "Give Papa a hug." Those who rebuffed him would often be subjected to crude, humiliating comments about their appearance or dress. A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said that Fayed would chase secretaries around the office and sometimes try to stuff money down women's blouses."

"For evidence of his vengefulness, look no further than his exposure of Neil Hamilton and the other MPs embroiled in the cash-for-questions scandal, and his subsequent pursuit of Jonathan Aitken. This was not a principled stand against corruption, for he was the self-confessed corrupter. It was, rather, an act of straightforward revenge, during which it became plain that he had kept all the necessary documentation to prove his allegations."

"[In 1997, Porter was the UK editor of Vanity Fair] Our concern was that if we settled, the evidence about his [Mohamed Al-Fayed's] abuse and surveillance would never be available to her. So it was vital that she understood that all Fayed’s properties were wired for audio and video, and that she could never be sure of having a private conversation on his premises, let alone being able to undress without being watched. Through intermediaries, we made our fears known. Diana's friend Rosa Monckton and her husband Dominic Lawson also repeatedly warned Diana. I have no idea whether she paid attention. By the end of July 1997, no agreement was reached."

"Ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι."

"ὅπερ ἔδει ποιῆσαι."

"Καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους μεῖζον [ἐστιν]."

"Πρῶτος ἀριθμός ἐστιν ὁ μονάδι μόνῃ μετρούμενος."

"μὴ εἶναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπί γεωμετρίαν."

"Non est regia [inquit Euclides] ad Geometriam via."

"Δός αὐτῷ τριώβολον, ἐπειδὴ δεῖ αὐτῷ ἐξ ὧν μανθάνει κερδαίνειν."

"The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God."

"With the completion of Euclid's Elements... For the first time in history masses of isolated discoveries were unified and correlated by a single guided principle, that of rigid deduction from explicitly stated assumptions. ...If the Pythagorean dream of a mathematized science is to be realized, all of the sciences must eventually submit to the discipline that geometry accepted from Euclid."

"The term 'axiom' was used by Proclus, but not by Euclid. He speaks, instead, of 'common notions'—common either to all men or to all sciences."

"The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object."

"There is irrefutable evidence that a substantial portion of the material recorded in the Elements was known before Euclid, and there is nothing either in the style or in the plan of the treatise to suggest that it was intended as a collection of original contributions. Thus, on the whole... the chief objective... was to put system and rigour into the work of his predecessors."

"There never has been, and till we see it we never shall believe that there can be, a system of geometry worthy of the name, which has any material departures (we do not speak of corrections or extensions or developments) from the plan laid down by Euclid."

"Euclid... gave his famous definition of a point: "A point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude." …A point has no existence by itself. It exists only as a part of the pattern of relationships which constitute the geometry of Euclid. This is what one means when one says that a point is a mathematical abstraction. The question, What is a point? has no satisfactory answer. Euclid's definition certainly does not answer it. The right way to ask the question is: How does the concept of a point fit into the logical structure of Euclid's geometry? ...It cannot be answered by a definition."

"The history of Alexandrian mathematics begins with the Elements of Euclid and closes with the Algebra of Diophantus, both of which are founded on the discoveries of several preceding centuries."

"Euclid is said to have written the Elements of Music. Two treatises are attributed to Euclid in... the Musici, the... Sectio canonis (the theory of the intervals) and the... (introduction to harmony). The first, resting on the Pythagorean theory of music, is mathematical and clearly and well written, the style and the form of the propositions agreeing well with what we find in the Elements. Its genuineness is confirmed not only by internal evidence... Euclid is twice mentioned by name, in the commentary on Ptolemy's Harmonica published by Wallis... The second treatise is not Euclid's..."

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."

"Those who have written the history of geometry have thus far carried the development of this science. Not much later than these is Euclid, who wrote the 'Elements,' arranged much of Eudoxus' work, completed much of Theaetetus's and brought to irrefragable proof propositions which had been less strictly proved by his predecessors."

"Not much younger than these (sc. Hermotimus of Colophon and Philippus of Mende) is Euclid, who put together the Elements, collecting many of Eudoxus' theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus', and also bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors. This man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy. For Archimedes, who came immediately after the first (Ptolemy), makes mention of Euclid: and, further, they say that Ptolemy once asked him if there was in geometry any shorter way than that of the elements, and he answered that there was no royal road to geometry. He is then younger than pupils of Plato but older than Eratosthenes and Archimedes; for the latter were contemporary with one another, as Eratosthenes somewhere says."

"Inasmuch as many things, while appearing to rest on truth and to follow from scientific principles, really tend to lead one astray from the principles and deceive the more superficial minds, he has handed down methods for the discriminative understanding of these things as well, by the use of which methods we shall be able to give beginners in this study practice in the discovery of paralogisms and to avoid being misled. This treatise, by which he puts this machinery in our hands, he entitled (the book) of Pseudaria, enumerating in order their various kinds, exercising our intelligence in each case by theorems of all sorts, setting the true side by side with the false, and combining the refutation of error with practical illustration. This book then is by way of cathartic and exercise, while the Elements contain the irrefragable and complete guide to the actual scientific investigation of the subjects of geometry."

"Are you making war upon us, because you anticipate that we will not endure such indignity, but that we will fight on behalf of our laws, and die in defence of our national customs? For you cannot possibly have been ignorant of what was likely to result from your attempt to introduce these innovations respecting our temple."

"A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial."

"It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time; [...] Time is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time."

"Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body."

"The holy Moses … discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects, denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living."

"Moses … takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws of temperance."

"The road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt but profitable exceedingly. The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent."

"The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements. Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens."

"There is no sweeter delight than that the soul should be charged through and through with justice, exercising itself in her eternal principles and doctrines and leaving no vacant place into which injustice can make its way."

"If one adds anything small or great to the queen of virtues, piety, or on the other hand takes something from it, in either case he will change and transform its nature. Addition will beget superstition and subtraction will beget impiety."

"But some, making no account of the wealth of nature, pursue the wealth of vain opinions. They choose to lean on one who lacks rather than one who has the gift of sight, and with this defective guidance to their steps must of necessity fall."

"We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between mortality and immortality."

"The health of the soul is to have its faculties, reason, high spirit and desire happily tempered, with the reason in command and reining in the other two, like restive horses. The special name of this health is temperance, that is σωφροσύνη or “thought-preserving,” for it creates a preservation of one of our powers, namely that of wise-thinking."

"If they are unwilling to give, they should at least lend with all readiness and alacrity, not with the prospect of receiving anything back except the principal. … In place of the interest which they determine not to accept they receive a further bonus of the fairest and most precious things that human life has to give, mercy neighborliness, charity, magnanimity, a good report and good fame. And what acquisition can rival these? Nay, even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence."

"Can we then hold the poverty-in-wealth of the money-grubbing usurers to be of any account? They may seem to be kings with purses full of gold, but they never even in their dreams have had a glimpse of the wealth that has eyes to see."

"τὸν μὲν οὖν τῶν Πυθαγορείων ἱερώτατον θίασον λόγος ἔχει μετὰ πολλῶν καὶ ἄλλων καλῶν καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἀναδιδάσκειν, “ταῖς λεωφόροις μὴ βαδίζειν ὁδοῖς,” οὐχ ἵνα κρημνοβατῶμεν—οὐ γὰρ ποσὶ κάματον παρήγγελλεν—, ἀλλ᾿ αἰνιττόμενος διὰ συμβόλου τὸ μήτε λόγοις μήτ᾿ ἔργοις δημώδεσι καὶ πεπατημένοις χρῆσθαι."

"They in their desire for health commit themselves to physicians, but these people show no willingness to cast off the soul-sickness of their untrained grossness by resorting to wise men...."

"Wisdom … never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself."

"Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions."

"God and no mortal is my Sovereign."

"He who has God alone for his leader, he alone is free."

"If one looks with a penetrating eye into the facts, he will clearly perceive that no two things are so closely akin as independence of action and freedom, because the bad man has a multitude of encumbrances, such as love of money or reputation and pleasure, while the good man has none at all. He stands defiant and triumphant."

"The good man … has learnt to set at naught the injunctions laid upon him by those most lawless rulers of the soul, inspired as he is by his ardent yearning for the freedom whose peculiar heritage it is that it obeys no orders and works no will but its own."

"Homer often calls kings “shepherds of the people,” but nature more accurately applies the title to the good, since kings are more often in the position of the sheep than of the shepherd. They are led by strong drink and good looks and by baked meats and savory dishes and the dainties produced by cooks and confectioners, to say nothing of their craving for silver and gold and grander ambitions."

"But you say, “by obedience to another he loses his liberty.” How then is it that children suffer the orders of their father and mother, and pupils the injunctions of their instructors?"

"The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked” philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine."

"Those in whom anger or desire or any other passion, or again any insidious vice holds sway, are entirely enslaved, while all whose life is regulated by law are free. And right reason is an infallible law engraved not by this mortal or that and, therefore, perishable as he, nor on parchment slabs, and, therefore, soulless as they, but by immortal nature on the immortal mind, never to perish."

"One may well wonder at the short-sightedness of those who ignore the characteristics which so clearly distinguish different things and declare that the laws of Solon and Lycurgus are all-sufficient to secure the greatest of republics, Athens and Sparta, because their sovereign authority is loyally accepted by those who enjoy that citizenship, yet deny that right reason, which is the fountain head of all other law, can impart freedom to the wise, who obey all that it prescribes or forbids."

"We have a very clear evidence of freedom in the equality recognized by all the good in addressing each other."

"Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise."

"The majority, who through the blindness of their reason do not discern the damages which the soul has sustained, only feel the pain of external injuries, because the faculty of judgment, which alone can enable them to apprehend the damage to the mind, is taken from them."

"Nor is it a matter for wonder that the good do not appear herded in great thongs. First because specimens of great goodness are rare, secondly, because they avoid the great crowd of the more thoughtless and keep themselves at leisure for the contemplation of what nature has to show."

"What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits."

"And yet these things for which we should strive eagerly, things so closely akin to ourselves, so truly our own, we treat with great slackness and constant indifference and thus destroy the germs of excellence, while those things in which deficiency were a merit we desire with an insatiable yearning."

"A far greater glory is it to the wise to die for freedom, the love of which stands in very truth implanted in the soul like nothing else, not as a casual adjunct but an essential part of its unity, and cannot be amputated without the whole system being destroyed as a result."

"Noble souls, whose brightness the greed of fortune cannot dim, have a kingly something, which urges them to contend on equal footing with persons of the most massive dignity and pits freedom of speech against arrogance."

"This too is a truth well known to everyone who has taken even a slight hold of culture, that freedom is an honorable thing, and slavery a disgraceful thing, and that honorable things are associated with good men and disgraceful things with bad men. Hence, it clearly follows that no person of true worth is a slave, though threatened by a host of claimants who produce contracts to prove their ownership."

"As parents in private life teach wisdom to their children, so do [poets] in public life to their cities."

"Diogenes the cynic, seeing one of the so-called freedmen pluming himself, while many heartily congratulated him, marveled at the absence of reason and discernment. “A man might as well,” he said, “proclaim that one of his servants became a grammarian, a geometrician, or musician, when he has no idea whatever of the art.” For as the proclamation cannot make them men of knowledge, so neither can it make them free."

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

"It is evident that Philo's Therapeutes are a branch of the Essenes. Their name indicates it — Essaioc, Asaya, physician. Hence, the contradictions, forgeries, and other desperate expedients to reconcile the prophecies of the Jewish canon with the Galilean nativity and god-ship... Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the end of the Age; which proves their knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and kabalists, who with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the secret of the duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and theurgists... they had their mystic books, and predicted future events..."

"Philo was enough heir to the Stoic and Platonic tradition to accord to the concept and name of araté an important place in his thought. ...The very meaning of araté is withdrawn from the positive faculties... and placed in the knowledge of nothingness. Confidence in one's own moral powers, the whole enterprise of self-perfection... and the self-attribution of the achievement—integral aspects of the Greek conception of virtue—this... is here condemned as the vice of self-love and conceit. ..."[Q]ueen of the virtues," the most perfect... is faith, which combines the turning to God with the recognition and contempt of one's own nothingness. ..."[T]he vice most odious to God" is vainglory, self-love, arrogance, presumption—in brief, the pride of considering oneself as one's own lord and ruler and of relying on one's own powers. This [is a] complete disintegration of the Greek ideal of virtue... While to the Hellenes from Plato to Plotinus man's way to God led through moral self-perfection, for Philo it leads through self-despair in the realization of one's nothingness. ..."For then is the time for the creature to encounter the Creator, when it has recognized its own nothingness"... To know God and to disown oneself is a standing correlation in Philo. "...fly from oneself and flee to God." ..."he who flees from his own flees to that of the All" ..."escape even thyself, and pass out of thyself, raving and God-possessed like the Dionysian Corybantes""

"There was now a tumult arisen at Alexandria, between the Jewish inhabitants and the Greeks; and three ambassadors were chosen out of each party that were at variance, who came to Gaius. Now one of these ambassadors from the people of Alexandria was Apion, (29) who uttered many blasphemies against the Jews; and, among other things that he said, he charged them with neglecting the honors that belonged to Caesar; for that while all who were subject to the Roman empire built altars and temples to Gaius, and in other regards universally received him as they received the gods, these Jews alone thought it a dishonorable thing for them to erect statues in honor of him, as well as to swear by his name. Many of these severe things were said by Apion, by which he hoped to provoke Gaius to anger at the Jews, as he was likely to be. But Philo, the principal of the Jewish embassage, a man eminent on all accounts, brother to Alexander the alabarch, (30) and one not unskillful in philosophy, was ready to betake himself to make his defense against those accusations; but Gaius prohibited him, and bid him begone; he was also in such a rage, that it openly appeared he was about to do them some very great mischief. So Philo being thus affronted, went out, and said to those Jews who were about him, that they should be of good courage, since Gaius's words indeed showed anger at them, but in reality had already set God against himself."

"Philo of Alexandria introduced in the first century what has been described as the 'Hellenizing of the Old Testament,' or the allegorical method of exegesis. By this, as Erdmann observes, the Bible narrative was found to contain a deeper, and particularly an allegorical interpretation, in addition to its literal interpretation; this was not conscious disingenuousness but a natural mode of amalgamating the Greek philosophic with the Hebraic doctrines."

"Many of the Christian writers grew up in communities where the teaching of the Stoics was all-pervasive in cultured circles. Through this philosophy they became familiar with the concept that "reason pervades all things like a fiery essence, and that the soul of man is a spark from this universal reason." Philo, chief exponent of the Alexandrian school of Judaism, who lived during the period 30 B.C.-50 A.D., was another channel through which Greek ideas flowed into the early [Christian] church. Philo attempted to combine Hebrew religion and Greek philosophy. He gave great impetus to the tendency to allegorize the Old Testament and to derive from it highly speculative ideas which became universal among Christian theologians. Philo's interpretation of the Greek term "Logos" profoundly affected Christian thought."

"So all pervasive indeed was this moral philosophy of the Stoics that it was read by the Jews of Alexandria into Moses under the veil of allegory and was declared to be the inner meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures."

"Idealists, workers of thought, unite to show how inspiration and genius walk in step with the progress of the machine, of aircraft, of industry, of trade, of the sciences, of electricity."

"Madness blew so violently on the immeasurable air pump of the circuit, that it took the form of a spiral, rising like a screw to the Zenith.. [describing the Brescia automobile races, in 1907]"

"O my brother Futurists! All of you, look at yourselves!.. ..In the name of that Human Pride we so adore, I proclaim that the hour is nigh when men with broad temples and steel chins will give birth magnificently, with a single trust of their bulging will, to giants with flawless gestures."

"..there is no longer any beauty except the struggle. Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece."

"While an artist is labouring at his work of art, nothing prevents it from surpassing Dream. As soon as it is finished, the work must be hidden or destroyed, or better still, thrown as a prey to the brutal crowd which will magnify it by killing it with its scorn, and thereby intensify its absurd uselessness. We thus condemn art as finished work, we conceive of it only in its movement, in the state of effort and draft. Art is simply a possibility for absolute conquest. For the artist, to complete is to die."

"We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to run on grapeshot is more beautiful than The Victory of Samoth-race (1910)."

"..a member of anarchist and revolutionary circles, attracted in turn by violent action and by dream, before resolving to dedicate him to painting. [describing Boccioni ]"

"We had stayed up all night — my friends and I — beneath mosque lamps hanging from the ceiling. Their brass domes were filigreed, starred like our souls; just as, again like our souls, they were illuminated by the imprisoned brilliance of an electric heart. On the opulent oriental rugs, we had crushed our ancestral lethargy, arguing all the way to the final frontiers of logic and blackening reams of paper with delirious writings."

"THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM"

"11. We shall sing the great masses shaken with work, pleasure, or rebellion: we shall sing the multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution in the modern metropolis; shall sing the vibrating nocturnal fervor of factories and shipyards burning under violent electrical moons; bloated railroad stations that devour smoking serpents; factories hanging from the sky by the twisting threads of spiraling smoke; bridges like gigantic gymnasts who span rivers, flashing at the sun with the gleam of a knife; adventurous steamships that scent the horizon, locomotives with their swollen chest, pawing the tracks like massive steel horses bridled with pipes, and the oscillating flight of airplanes, whose propeller flaps at the wind like a flag and seems to applaud like a delirious crowd."

"It is from Italy that we are flinging this to the world, our manifesto of burning and overwhelming violence, with which we today establish 'Futurism',for we intend to free this nation from its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians."

"Hail! great incendiary poets, you Futurist friends!.. Hail! Paolo Buzzi, Federico de Maria, Enrico Cavacchioli, Corrado Govoni, Libero Altomare! Let's flee the city of Paralysis, devastate Gout, and lay the great military Railroad along the flanks of Gorisankar, summit of the world!"

"A cry went up in the airy solitude of the high plains: 'Let's Murder the moonlight!' Some ran to nearby cascades; gigantic wheels were raised, and turbines transformed the rushing waters into magnetic pulses that rushed up wires, up high poles, up to shining, humming globes."

"In order to win over Paris and appear, in the eyes of all Europe, an absolute innovator, the most advanced of all, I urge you to get to work with all your heart, resolute on being bolder, crazier, more advanced, surprising, eccentric, incomprehensible, and grotesque than anybody else in music. I urge you to be a madman."

"Let the divine reign of Electric Light finally commence, liberating Venice from its venal moonlight of furnished rooms"

"The past is necessarily inferior to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?"

"Art deals with profound and simple moods.. ..Let us suppose that the artist – in this instance [the artist] Picabia – gets a certain impression by looking at our skyscrapers, our city, our way of life, and that he tries to reproduce it.. ..he will convey it in plastic ways on the canvas, even though we see neither skyscrapers nor city on it."

"Try to live the war pictorially studying it in all its mechanical forms (military trains, fortifications, wounded men, ambulances, hospitals, parades, etc)."

"On 11 October 1908, having worked for six years at my international magazine Poesia, in an attempt to free the Italian lyrical genius that was under sentence of death from its traditional and commercial fetters, I suddenly felt that articles, poetry and controversies were no longer enough. It was absolutely crucial to switch methods, get out into the streets, lay siege to theaters, and introduce the fisticuffs into the artistic struggle.. .My Italian blood raced faster when my lips coined out loud the word FUTURISM. It was the new formula of Action-Art and a code of mental health. It was a youthful and innovative banner, anti-traditional, optimistic, heroic and dynamic, that had to be hoisted over the ruins of all attachment to the past."

"Before us, art relied on memory, an anxious re-evocation of an Object lost (happiness, love, a landscape), and hence was nostalgic, static, charged with suffering and distance. With Futurism, instead, art is turning into art-action, which is to say, into will, optimism, aggression, possession, penetration, delight, brutal reality within art (example: onomatopoiea; —example: noise-tuners = motors), geometrical splendor of forces, projections forward. Thus, art is becoming Presence, new Object, new reality created with the abstract elements of the universe. The hands of the passéist artist used to suffer for the sake of the lost Object; our hand will twitch for the new Object to be created. That is why the new Object (the plastic complex) has miraculously appeared in your hands."

"Mondrian is the greatest Futurist painter of the North."

"We love the indomitable bellicose patriotism that sets you apart; we love the national pride that guides your muscularly courageous race; we love the potent individualism that doesn't prevent you from opening your arms to individualists of every land, whether libertarians or anarchists."

"The compliments you are about to pay could only sadden me, because what you love in our dear peninsula is exactly the object of our hatreds. Indeed, you crisscross Italy only to meticulously sniff out the traces of our oppressive past, and you are happy, insanely happy, if you have the good fortune to carry home some miserable stone on which our ancestors have trodden."

"When will you disembarrass yourselves of the lymphatic ideology of that deplorable Ruskin, which I would like to cover with so much ridicule that you would never forget it? With his morbid dream of primitive and rustic life, with his nostalgia for Homeric cheeses and legendary wool-spinners, with his hatred for the machine, steam power, and electricity, that maniac of antique simplicity is like a man who, after having reached full physical maturity, still wants to sleep in his cradle and feed himself at the breast of his decrepit old nurse in order to recover his thoughtless infancy."

"And now I am obliged to tell you what it is that clearly distinguishes Futurism from anarchism."

"All this will have left you disposed to understand one of our principal Futurist efforts, which consists of abolishing in literature the apparently indissoluble fusion of the two concepts of Woman and Beauty. This ideological a fusion has reduced all romance to a sort of heroic assault that a bellicose and lyrical male launches against a tower that bristles with enemies, a story which ends when the hero, now beneath starlight, carries the divine Beauty-Woman away to new heights. Novels such as Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo or Salammbô by Flaubert can clarify my point. It is a matter of a dominant leitmotif, already worn out,c of which we would like to disencumber literature and art in general."

"It is therefore necessary to prepare the imminent and inevitable identification of man with the motor, facilitating and perfecting an incessant exchange of intuition, rhythm, instinct and metallic discipline, quite utterly unknown to the majority of humanity and only divined by the most lucid mind."

"We want to fight ferociously against the fanatical, unconscious and snobbish religion of the past, which is nourished by the evil influence of museums. We rebel against the supine admiration of old canvases, old statues and old objects, and against the enthusiasm for all that is worm-eaten, dirty and corroded by time; we believe that the common contempt for everything young, new and palpitating with life is unjust and criminal."

"I have said that Marinetti was.. ..exceptionally gifted, and I should add that I never saw him twiddling his thumbs even for ten minutes.. ..beside his desk he often kept piles of books in which he would write dedications.. ..invariably with the purpose of spreading the word about Futurism."

"F. T. Marinetti is perhaps the most celebrated example of the kind of writer who lives by his wits and to whom something witty rarely occurs... He has also proposed that Italians replace chic with elettrizzante [electrifying] (five syllables instead of one) and bar with qui si beve [here one drinks]-four syllables for one, and the unresolved enigma of how the plural will be formed. "Our Italian language must not be despoiled by foreignisms!" declares Filippo Tommaso with a Puritanism not unworthy of the aseptic Cejador or the forty stalls of the Spanish Royal Academy. Foreignisms! The old impresario of Futurism cannot abide such mischief."

"When Marinetti founded Futurism in 1909, he called for ‘incendiary violence’ that might drive Italy and Italians out of the ‘fetid somnolence’ of dolce far niente. He incited Futurists and their allies to the destruction of museums, monuments, and universities—to decimate everything that ‘stank of the past’… All of this was suffused with aggression and violence, with an appeal to slaps and blows, to culminate in an invocation to what he called the ‘beauty of battle,’ and the ‘hygiene of war.’"

"There can be no doubt that Marinetti feared that Futurism was going to be increasingly marginalized in Fascist Italy. He had to think about his own and his movement's survival under a fascist regime and to rescue what he could of an artistic movement which he had built up and promoted for more than a decade. [Marinetti resigned from Mussolini's Fascist Party in 1920]"

"He was dispos'd to mirth; but on the sudden A Roman thought hath struck him."

"Eternity was in our lips and eyes."

"Where’s my serpent of old Nile? For so he calls me."

"My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then!"

"O, wither’d is the garland of the war! The soldier’s pole is fall'n; young boys and girls Are level now with men; the odds is gone, And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon."

"Good sirs, take heart: — We'll bury him; and then, what's brave, what's noble, Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, And make Death proud to take us. Come, away: This case of that huge spirit now is cold. — Ah, women, women! — come; we have no friend But resolution, and the briefest end."

"I have Immortal longings in me."

"I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life."

"Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?"

"The secret is always to wear the same scent, until it becomes a personal, untransferable trademark, something that identifies us. Cleopatra knew this and, as with everything else she did, carried it to an extreme."

"Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed."

"Her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased..."

"It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter."

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety..."

"All strange and terrible events are welcome, But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow, Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great."

"Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure The sense of man, and all his mind possess, As Beauty's lovely bait, that doth procure Great warriors oft their rigour to repress, And mighty hands forget their manliness; ..... And so did warlike Antony neglect The world's whole rule for Cleopatra's sight; Such wondrous power hath women's fair aspect To captive men, and make them all the world reject."

"Kings are not elected. Gods are not elected."

"If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he had his substance from nothing."

"Arius began to say things like this in his sermons and writings: "If God and Christ were equal then Christ should be called God’s brother, not God’s Son." People puzzled about that. They were hearing now something different from this presbyter than they were hearing from the bishop. And Arius also created the very famous saying, "There was a time when He was not." "There was a time when the Son did not exist." So in his view, Christ became what we could call a third thing. He is neither God nor is He man, but something in between. There is God and there is the Son and there is the rest of creation. So rather than having two things you have a tertium quid, a third thing — neither god nor man."

"A big book is a big misfortune."

"Nothing unattested do I sing."

"Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν"

"[...] ὅσσα τ' ὀδόντωνἔνδοθι νείαιράν τ' εἰς ἀχάριστον ἔδυ, καὶ τῶν οὐδὲν ἔμεινεν ἐς αὔριον· ὅσσα δ' ἀκουαῖς εἰσεθέμην, ἔτι μοι μοῦνα πάρεστι τάδε."

"Εἰπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον ἐς δέ με δάκρυ ἤγαγεν ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ..."

"Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face; She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace."

"Here sleeps Saon, of Acanthus, son of Dicon, a holy sleep: say not that the good die."

"O Charidas, what of the under world? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection? A lie. And Pluto? A fable; we perish utterly."

"Set a thief to catch a thief."

"The Graces, three erewhile, are three no more; A fourth is come with perfume sprinkled o'er. 'Tis Berenice blest and fair; were she Away the Graces would no Graces be."

"His blend of sensitivity and detachment, elegance, wit, and learning, had a profound influence on later Roman poets, especially Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius (the last thought of himself as the Roman Callimachus), and through them on the whole European literary tradition."

"The most outstanding intellect of this generation, the greatest poet that the Hellenistic age produced, and historically one of the most important figures in the development of Graeco-Roman (and hence European) literature."

"The people who walk angelically according to their free will and practice discipline in the life of the angels remove themselves completely from the desires of the flesh, beloved brothers; they die daily in the life that belongs to earth, but they live in the life of the angels, just as they share in the life of the Lord."

"For in other matters also which go to make up life, we shall find differences according to circumstances. For example, it is not right to kill, yet in war it is lawful and praiseworthy to destroy the enemy; accordingly not only are they who have distinguished themselves in the field held worthy of great honours, but monuments are put up proclaiming their achievements. So that the same act is at one time and under some circumstances unlawful, while under others, and at the right time, it is lawful and permissible. The same reasoning applies to the relation of the sexes. He is blessed who, being freely yoked in his youth, naturally begets children. But if he uses nature licentiously, the punishment of which the Apostle writes shall await whoremongers and adulterers. For there are two ways in life, as touching these matters. The one the more moderate and ordinary, I mean marriage; the other angelic and unsurpassed, namely virginity. Now if a man choose the way of the world, namely marriage, he is not indeed to blame; yet he will not receive such great gifts as the other. For he will receive, since he too brings forth fruit, namely thirtyfold. But if a man embrace the holy and unearthly way, even though, as compared with the former, it be rugged and hard to accomplish, yet it has the more wonderful gifts: for it grows the perfect fruit, namely an hundredfold. So then their unclean and evil objections had their proper solution long since given in the divine Scriptures."

"For the . . . right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life . . . . Anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the Kingdom of Heaven. Anyone who wants to look at sunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some approximation to the purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to the place in order to do so."

"He was made man in order that we might be made gods.[Christ] manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality."

"Perhaps you marvel, because having determined to speak of the Incarnation of the Logos, we now treat of the beginning of mankind; but this is not foreign to our treatment. For it is necessary that we, speaking of the manifestation of the Savior among us, should also speak of the beginning of mankind so that you may know that our guilt was to Him the reason for His coming and that our transgression caused the philanthropy of the Logos."

"Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God."

"For never at any time did Christian people take their title from the Bishops among them, but from the Lord, on whom we rest our faith. Thus, though the blessed Apostles have become our teachers, and have ministered the Saviour's Gospel, yet not from them have we our title, but from Christ we are and are named Christians. But for those who derive the faith which they profess from others, good reason is it they should bear their name, whose property they have become."

"For thus, the former Jews also, denying the Word, and saying, 'We have no king but Cæsar John 19:15,' were immediately stripped of all they had, and forfeited the light of the Lamp, the odour of ointment, knowledge of prophecy, and the Truth itself; till now they understand nothing, but are walking as in darkness."

"Wherefore, in their craft, as children of this world, after feeding their so-called lamp from the wild olive, and fearing lest it should soon be quenched (for it is said, 'the light of the wicked shall be put out Job 18:5,') they hide it under the bushel of their hypocrisy, and make a different profession, and boast of patronage of friends and authority of Constantius, that what with their hypocrisy and their professions, those who come to them may be kept from seeing how foul their heresy is."

"If he [Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own place until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue."

"He had given such heed to what was read that none of the things that were written fell from him to the ground, but he remembered all, and afterwards his memory served him for books."

"He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all."

"Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others."

"Antony ... used to say that it behooved a man to give all his time to his soul rather than his body, yet to grant a short space to the body through its necessities; but all the more earnestly to give up the whole remainder to the soul and seek its profit, that it might not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but, on the contrary, the body might be in subjection to the soul."

"Others such as these met him in the outer mountain and thought to mock him because he had not learned letters. And Antony said to them, 'What do you say? Which is first, mind or letters? And which is the cause of which— mind of letters or letters of mind.' And when they answered mind is first and the inventor of letters, Antony said, 'Whoever, therefore, has a sound mind has not need of letters.'"

"Perhaps the topic [of this book] will appear fairly difficult to you because it is not yet familiar knowledge and the understanding of beginners is easily confused by mistakes; but with your inspiration and my teaching it will be easy for you to master, because clear intelligence supported by good lessons is a fast route to knowledge."

"If we arrive at an equation containing on each side the same term but with different coefficients, we must take equals from equals until we get one term equal to another term. But, if there are on one or on both sides negative terms, the deficiencies must be added on both bides until all the terms on both sides are positive. Then we must take equals from equals until one term is left on each side."

"As a square number is known to be the product of a number multiplied by itself, so every polygonal number, multiplied by one number and added to another, both of which depend upon the number of its angles, produces a square number. I shall prove this, and shall show also how from a given side to find its polygon and conversely. Some auxiliary propositions must first be proved."

"The solution in integers, or in rational numbers, of indeterminate equations belongs to diophantine analysis. The name honors Diophantus, whose treatise of thirteen books, of which only six survive, was the first on the subject. The Latin translation (A.D. 1621) of this suggestive fragment directly inspired Fermat to his creation of the modern higher arithmetic. It also inspired something much less desirable. Diophantus contented himself with special solutions of his problems; the majority of his numerous successors have done likewise, until diophantine analysis today is choked by a jungle of trivialities bearing no resemblance to cultivated mathematics. It is long past time that the standards of Diaphantus be forgotten though he himself be remembered with becoming reverence."

"This work of Diaphantus... was the first Greek mathematics, if indeed it was Greek, to show a genuine talent for algebra. ...He had begun to use symbols operationally. This long stride forward is all the more remarkable because his algebraic notation... was almost as awkward as Greek logistic. That he accomplished what he did with the available techniques places him beyond question among the great algebraists."

"I have decided first to consider the majority of the authors who up to now have written about [algebra], so that I can fill in what they have missed out. They are very many, and among them Mohammed ibn Musa [Al-Khwarizmi], an Arab, is believed to be the first [...] I believe that the word “algebra” came from him, because some years ago, Brother Luca [Pacioli] of Borgo San Sepolcro of the Minorite order, having set himself the task of writing on this science, as much in Latin as in Italian, said that the word “algebra” was Arabic [...] and that the science came from the Arabs. Many who have written after him have believed and said likewise, but in recent years, a Greek work on this discipline has been discovered in the Library of our Lord in the Vatican, composed by a certain Diophantus of Alexandria, a Greek author [...] Antonio Maria Pazzi and I have translated five books (of the seven) [...] In this work we have found that he cites the Indian authors many times, and thus I have been made aware that this discipline belonged to the Indians before the Arabs."

"Admitting the Hindu and Alexandrian authors [such as Diophantus], to be nearly equally ancient, it must be conceded in favor of the Indian algebraist, that he was more advanced in the science […] In the whole science [of algebra], he [Diophantus] is very far behind the Hindu writers […] he is hardly to be considered as the inventor, since he seems to treat the art as already known."

"If his works were not written in Greek, no one would think for a moment that they were the product of Greek mind. There is nothing in his works that reminds us of the classic period of Greek mathematics. His were almost entirely new ideas on a new subject. In the circle of Greek mathematicians he stands alone in his specialty. Except for him, we should be constrained to say that among the Greeks algebra was almost an unknown science."

"In this work [Arithmetica] is introduced the idea of an algebraic equation expressed in algebraic symbols. His treatment is purely analytical and completely divorced from geometrical methods."

"He appears to be the first who could perform such operations as (x - 1) \times (x - 2) without reference to geometry. Such identities as (a + b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2, which with Euclid appear in the elevated rank of geometric theorems, are with Diophantus the simplest consequences of the algebraic laws of operation."

"In the solution of simultaneous equations Diophantus adroitly managed with only one symbol for the unknown quantities and arrived at answers, most commonly, by the method of tentative assumption, which consists in assigning to some of the unknown quantities preliminary values, that satisfy only one or two of the conditions. These values lead to expressions palpably wrong, but which generally suggest some stratagem by which values can be secured satisfying all the conditions of the problem."

"Greek algebra before Diophantus was essentially rhetorical."

"The "porisms" of Pappus anticipated projective geometry, the problems of Diophantus prepared the ground for the modern theory of equations."

"Diophantus was the first Greek mathematician who frankly recognized fractions as numbers. He was also the first to handle in a systematic way not only simple equations, but quadratics and equations of higher order. In spite of his ineffective symbolism, in spite of the inelegance of his methods, he must be regarded as the precursor of modern algebra. But Diophantus was the last flicker of a dying candle."

"Fermat, commenting about 1637 on Diophantus II, 8 (to solve x2 + y2 = a2), stated that "it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a biquadrate into two biquadrates, or in general any power higher than the second into two powers of like degree; I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain." This theorem is known as Fermat's last theorem."

"The first algebraist known to us, the Greek Diophantus (360 A.D.), antedates Aryabhata by a century; but Cajori believes that he took his lead from India."

"Diophantus himself, it is true, gives only the most special solutions of all the questions which he treats, and he is generally content with indicating numbers which furnish one single solution. But it must not be supposed that his method was restricted to these very special solutions. In his time the use of letters to denote undetermined numbers was not yet established, and consequently the more general solutions which we are now enabled to give by means of such notation could not be expected from him. Nevertheless, the actual methods which he uses for solving any of his problems are as general as those which are in use to-day; nay, we are obliged to admit, that there is hardly any method yet invented in this kind of analysis of which there are not sufficiently distinct traces to be discovered in Diophantus."

"There is scarcely any one who states purely arithmetical questions, scarcely any who understands them. Is this not because arithmetic has been treated up to this time geometrically rather than arithmetically? This certainly is indicated by many works ancient and modern. Diophantus himself also indicates this. But he has freed himself from geometry a little more than others have, in that he limits his analysis to rational numbers only; nevertheless the Zetcica of Vieta, in which the methods of Diophantus are extended to continuous magnitude and therefore to geometry, witness the insufficient separation of arithmetic from geometry. Now arithmetic has a special domain of its own, the theory of numbers. This was touched upon but only to a slight degree by Euclid in his Elements, and by those who followed him it has not been sufficiently extended, unless perchance it lies hid in those books of Diophantus which the ravages of time have destroyed. Arithmeticians have now to develop or restore it. To these, that I may lead the way, I propose this theorem to be proved or problem to be solved. If they succeed in discovering the proof or solution, they will acknowledge that questions of this kind are not inferior to the more celebrated ones from geometry either for depth or difficulty or method of proof: Given any number which is not a square, there also exists an infinite number of squares such that when multiplied into the given number and unity is added to the product, the result is a square."

"Many scholars go right through the period of their mathematical education without being introduced to indeterminate (Diophantine) problems. This should seem somewhat strange to us when we reflect on how many real problems of life require solutions which are meaningless unless they are whole numbers. The absence of Diophantine analysis from school curricula is difficult to justify. The methods... are not beyond the capabilities of schoolchildren. It is true that the problems often involve tedious calculations, but this should not be used as an excuse for ignoring the valuable principles of this analysis. Diophantus himself was usually content with finding just one solution... But once one solution has been obtained, the general solution can readily be obtained from it."

"In 130 indeterminate equations, which Diophantus treats, there are more than 50 different classes... It is therefore difficult for a modern, after studying 100 Diophantic equations, to solve the 101st; and if we have made the attempt, and after some vain endeavours read Diophantus' own solution, we shall be astonished to see how suddenly he leaves the broad high-road, dashes into a side-path and with a quick turn reaches the goal, often enough a goal with reaching which we should not be content; we expected to have to climb a toilsome path, but to be rewarded at the end by an extensive view; instead of which, our guide leads by narrow, strange, but smooth ways to a small eminence; he has finished! He lacks the calm and concentrated energy for a deep plunge into a single important problem; and in this way the reader also hurries with inward unrest from problem to problem, as in a game of riddles, without being able to enjoy the individual one. Diophantus dazzles more than he delights. He is in a wonderful measure shrewd, clever, quick-sighted, indefatigable, but does not penetrate thoroughly or deeply into the root of the matter. As his problems seem framed in obedience to no obvious scientific necessity, but often only for the sake of the solution, the solution itself also lacks completeness and deeper signification. He is a brilliant performer in the art of indeterminate analysis invented by him, but the science has nevertheless been indebted, at least directly, to this brilliant genius for few methods, because he was deficient in the speculative thought which sees in the True more than the Correct. That is the general impression which I have derived from a thorough and repeated study of Diophantus' arithmetic."

"The geometrical algebra of the Greeks has been in evidence all through our history from Pythagoras downwards, and no more need be said of it here except that its arithmetical application was no new thing to Diophantus. It is probable, for example, that the solution of the quadratic equation, discovered first by geometry, was applied for the purpose of finding numerical values for the unknown as early as Euclid, if not earlier still. In Heron the numerical solution of equations is well established, so that Diophantus was not the first to treat equations algebraically. What he did was to take a step forward towards an algebraic notation."

"In … a series of lectures at the University of Padua in 1464, he [Regiomontanus] introduced the idea that Arabic algebra descended from Diophantus’s Arithmetica. This heralded the initiation of a myth cultivated by humanists for centuries. Diophantus … became the alleged origin of European algebra. … By overrating the importance of Diophantus … humanist writers created a new mythical identity of European mathematics."

"The creation of the formal language of mathematics is identical with the foundation of modern algebra. ...As far as Greek sources are concerned, the special influence of the Arithmetic of Diophantus on the content, but even more so on the form, of this Arabic science is unmistakable. ...concurrently with the elaboration... of the theory of equations which the Arabs had passed on to the West, the original text of Diophantus began, as early as the fifteenth century, to become well known and influential. But it was not until the last quarter of the sixteenth century that Vieta undertook to modify Diophantus' technique in a really critical way. He thereby became the true founder of modern mathematics."

"The Alexandrians used fractions as numbers in their own right, whereas the mathematicians of the classical period spoke only of a ratio of integers, not of parts of a whole and the ratios were used only in proportions. However, even in the classical period genuine fractions... as entities in their own right, were used in commerce. In the Alexandrian period, Archimedes, Heron, Diophantus, and others used fractions freely and performed operations with them. Though... they did not discuss the concept of fractions, apparently these were intuitively sufficiently clear..."

"Another feature of Alexandrian algebra is the absence of any explicit deductive structure. The various types of numbers... were not defined. Nor was there any axiomatic basis on which a deductive structure could be erected. The work of Heron, Nichomachus, and Diophantus, and of Archimedes as far as his arithmetic is concerned, reads like the procedural texts of the Egyptians and Babylonians... The deductive, orderly proof of Euclid and Apollonius, and of Archimedes' geometry is gone. The problems are inductive in spirit, in that they show methods for concrete problems that presumably apply to general classes whose extent is not specified. In view of the fact that as a consequence of the work of the classical Greeks mathematical results were supposed to be derived deductively from an explicit axiomatic basis, the emergence of an independent arithmetic and algebra with no logical structure of its own raised what became one of the great problems of the history of mathematics. This approach to arithmetic and algebra is the clearest indication of the Egyptian and Babylonian influences... Though the Alexandrian Greek algebraists did not seem to be concerned about this deficiency... it did trouble deeply the European mathematicians."

"Bachet de Méziriac remarked that any number (that is, positive integer) is either a square, or the sum of two, three, or four squares. He did not pretend to possess a proof. He found indications pointing to his statement in certain problems of Diophantus and verified it up to 325. In short, Bachet's statement was just a conjecture, found inductively. ...his main achievement was to put the question: How many squares are needed to represent all integers? Once this question is squarely put, there is not much difficulty in discovering the answer inductively."

"No one has yet translated from the Greek into Latin the thirteen books of Diophantus, in which the very flower of the whole of arithmetic lies hid, the ars rei et census [the art of the evaluation of wealth or tax] which to-day they call by the Arabic name of Algebra."

"For not more than six books [of Diophantus] are found, though in the proëmium he promises thirteen. If this book, a wonderful and difficult work, could be found entire, I should like to translate it into Latin, for the knowledge of Greek I have lately acquired would suffice for this."

"The Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria... it seems fairly probable... flourished about 250 A.D. ...We gather from the Arithmeticas introduction that it originally consisted of thirteen Books. Of these, only six have survived until now in Greek... The remaining seven were considered irretrievably lost until the recent discovery of four other, hitherto unknown books in Arabic translation, which, since it is attributed to Qustā ibn Lūqā, must have been made around or after the middle of the ninth century."

"However, it is not unlikely that the Arabs, who received from the Indians the numeral figures (which the Greeks knew not), did from them also receive the use of them, and many profound speculations concerning them, which neither Latins nor Greeks know, till that now of late we have learned them from thence. From the Indians also they might learn their algebra, rather than from Diophantus."

"But how much more splendid the methods which reduce the problems which seem to be hardly capable of solution even with the help of surds in such a way that, while the surds, when bidden (so to speak) to plough the arithmetic soil, become true to their name and deaf to entreaty, they are not so much as mentioned in these most ingenious solutions."

"Diophantos' work is so unique among the Greek treatises which we possess, that he cannot be said to recall the style or subject-matter of any other author, except, indeed, in the fragment on Polygonal Numbers; and even there the reference to Hypsikles is the only indication we can lay hold of."

"Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood."

"The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day."

"Between the time of Regiomontanus and that of Rafael Bombelli Diophantos was once more forgotten, or rather unknown. The Algebra of Bombelli appeared in 1572, and in the preface to this work the author tells us that he had recently discovered a Greek book on Algebra in the Vatican Library, written by a certain Diofantes... Though Bombelli did not carry out his plan of publishing Diophantos in a translation, he has nevertheless taken all the problems of Diophantos' first four Books and some of those of the fifth, and embodied them in his Algebra, interspersing them with his own problems. ...notation in this work of Bombelli's ...shows ...some advance upon that of Diophantos."

"With the help of books only he Wilhelm Xylander] studied the subject of Algebra, as far as was possible from what men like Cardan had written and by his own reflection, with such success that not only did he fall into what Herakleitos called... the conceit of "being somebody" in the field of Arithmetic and "Logistic," but others too who were themselves learned men thought him an arithmetician of exceptional merit. But when he first became acquainted with the problems of Diophantos his pride had a fall so sudden and so humiliating that he might reasonably doubt whether he ought previously to have bewailed, or laughed at himself. He considers it therefore worth while to confess publicly in how disgraceful a condition of ignorance he had previously been content to live, and to do something to make known the work of Diophantos, which had so opened his eyes."

"It may be in some measure due to the defects of notation in his time that Diophantos will have in his solutions no numbers whatever except rational numbers, in [the non-numbers of] which, in addition to surds and imaginary quantities, he includes negative quantities. ...Such equations then as lead to surd, imaginary, or negative roots he regards as useless for his purpose: the solution is in these cases ὰδοπος, impossible. So we find him describing the equation 4 = 4x + 20 as ᾰτοπος because it would give x = -4. Diophantos makes it throughout his object to obtain solutions in rational numbers, and we find him frequently giving, as a preliminary, conditions which must be satisfied, which are the conditions of a result rational in Diophantos' sense. In the great majority of cases when Diophantos arrives in the course of a solution at an equation which would give an irrational result he retraces his steps and finds out how his equation has arisen, and how he may by altering the previous work substitute for it another which shall give a rational result. This gives rise, in general, to a subsidiary problem the solution of which ensures a rational result for the problem itself. Though, however, Diophantos has no notation for a surd, and does not admit surd results, it is scarcely true to say that he makes no use of quadratic equations which lead to such results. Thus, for example, in v. 33 he solves such an equation so far as to be able to see to what integers the solution would approximate most nearly."

"The history of Alexandrian mathematics begins with the Elements of Euclid and closes with the Algebra of Diophantus, both of which are founded on the discoveries of several preceding centuries."

"The solution of the higher indeterminates depends almost entirely on very favourable numerical conditions and his methods are defective. But the extraordinary ability of Diophantus appears rather in the other department of his art, namely the ingenuity with which he reduces every problem to an equation which he is competent to solve."

"Diophantus shows great Adroitness in selecting the unknown, especially with a view to avoiding an adfected quadratic. ...The most common and characteristic of Diophantus' methods is his use of tentative assumptions which is applied in nearly every problem of the later books. It consists in assigning to the unknown a preliminary value which satisfies one or two only of the necessary conditions, in order that, from its failure to satisfy the remaining conditions, the operator may perceive what exactly is required for that purpose. ...a third characteristic of Diophantus [is] ...the use of the symbol for the unknown in different senses. ...The use of tentative assumptions leads again to another device which may be called... the method of limits. This may best be illustrated by a particular example. If Diophantus wishes to find a square lying between 10 and 11, he multiplies these numbers by successive squares till a square lies between the products. Thus between 40 and 44, 90 and 99 no square lies, but between 160 and 176 there lies the square 169. Hence x^2 = \tfrac{169}{16} will lie between the proposed limits."

"Sometimes... Diophantus solves a problem wholly or in part by synthesis. ...Although ...Diophantus does not treat his problems generally and is usually content with finding any particular numbers which happen to satisfy the conditions of his problems, ...he does occasionally attempt such general solutions as were possible to him. But these solutions are not often exhaustive because he had no symbol for a general coefficient."

"Though the defects in Diophantus' proofs are in general due to the limitation of his symbolism, it is not so always. Very frequently indeed Diophantus introduces into a solution arbitrary conditions and determinations which are not in the problem. Of such "fudged" solutions, as a schoolboy would call them, two particular kinds are very frequent. Sometimes an unknown is assumed at a determinate value... Sometimes a new condition is introduced."

"The Arithmetica... is deficient, sometimes pardonably, sometimes without excuse, in generalization. The book of Porismata, to which Diophantus sometimes refers, seems on the other hand to have been entirely devoted to the discussion of general properties of numbers. It is three times expressly quoted in the Arithmetica... Of all these propositions he says... 'we find it in the Porisms'; but he cites also a great many similar propositions without expressly referring to the Porisms. These latter citations fall into two classes, the first of which contains mere identities, such as the algebraical equivalents of the theorems in Euclid II. ...The other class contains general propositions concerning the resolution of numbers into the sum of two, three or four squares. ...It will be seen that all these propositions are of the general form which ought to have been but is not adopted in the Arithmetica. We are therefore led to the conclusion that the Porismata, like the pamphlet on Polygonal Numbers, was a synthetic and not an analytic treatise. It is open, however, to anyone to maintain the contrary, since no proof of any porism is now extant."

"With Diophantus the history of Greek arithmetic comes to an end. No original work, that we know of, was done afterwards."

"To give here an elaborate account of Pappus would be to create a false impression. His work is only the last convulsive effort of Greek geometry which was now nearly dead and was never effectually revived. It is not so with Ptolemy or Diophantus. The trigonometry of the former is the foundation of a new study which was handed on to other nations indeed but which has thenceforth a continuous history of progress. Diophantus also represents the outbreak of a movement which probably was not Greek in its origin, and which the Greek genius long resisted, but which was especially adapted to the tastes of the people who, after the extinction of Greek schools, received their heritage and kept their memory green."

"As a literary monument the Koran thus stands by itself, a production unique in Arabic literature, having neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom. Muslims of all ages are united in proclaiming the inimitability not only of its contents but of its style."

"But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of interracial understanding and co-operation. No other society has such a record of success uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavour so many and so various races of mankind… Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by co-operation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced—but if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both."

"Like all Arabs they (Enemies of Muhammad) were connoisseurs of language and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his (Muhammad's) own composition other men could rival it. Let them produce ten verses like it. If they could not (and it is obvious that they could not), then let them accept the Koran as an outstanding evidential miracle."

"That his [Muhammad's] reforms enhanced the status of women in general by contrast with the anarchy of pre-Islamic Arabia is universally admitted."

"My Christian faith makes me respect the other and love the other, do the best for the other. This is why our Lord Jesus Christ came and gave his life for us, so we can convert and love the other whatever he is, whether he's a Jew, a Muslim or any other religion. We have to respect each other and love each other."

"One can say that ‘Arabs’ are naturally violent. But the same could be said of the Barbarians who conquered Europe in the past. These invaders have been progressively ‘civilized’ by the Christian faith to become what they are now. In my opinion, the religious element plays an essential role in shaping a society. The fact that Christian ‘Arabs’ are different than Muslim Arabs is a proof of the strong connection between religion and society."

"Γραμματικοῦ θυγάτηρ ἔτεκεν φιλότητι μιγεῖσα παιδίον ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν, οὐδέτερον."

"Σκηνὴ πᾶς ὁ βίος, καὶ παίγνιον· ἤ μάθε παίζειν, τὴν σπουδὴν μεταθείς, ἢ φέρε τὰς ὀδύνας."

"Πάντες τῷ θανάτῳ τηρούμεθα, καὶ τρεφόμεσθα ὡς ἀγέλη χοίρων σφαζομένων ἀλόγως."

"I’ve worked in a lot of different organizations, and that helps because you often have seen a similar problem somewhere else. Now, organizations all have their different cultures and histories, but it helps to have seen a similar problem. It makes you realize, “I can figure this one out, maybe, or there is a way to solve this puzzle.” The other thing is I’ve worked in a couple of organizations that manage crises, like the International Monetary Fund, or when I was with the Department for International Development, we managed a lot of humanitarian crises around the world. So that teaches you to be calm under stress, and I suspect that skill might be useful in the years ahead."

"Obviously, it’s a great thing that women are increasingly in leadership roles in top universities. I guess I just sort of feel like it’s about time. It’s my honest opinion. I mean, I don’t wake up every morning thinking, “Oh, I’m the first woman president of Columbia.” You just kind of get on with the job. So I don’t really think about it very much every day. But I think it’s great."

"The idea that you are successful because you are smart and hardworking is pernicious and wrong, because it means everyone who is unsuccessful is stupid and lazy."

"Technology because it has changed jobs and lots of people haven’t benefited. They have been left behind. They don’t have the skills and they are not in the right place, with the result that their prospects are poor. And the way our whole social contract was predicated on women looking after the young and the old for free – now there are more women going to university than men, globally, not just in the UK, and they are employed, and the cost of them not working is really high, so you want them to work. Yet we haven’t found a way to adjust – a way to look after the young and old without women providing free labour."

"I am not just a person who wants to raise taxes and share out more. I want everyone to pay their fair share of taxes and invest more in each other"

"I never had a long term plan. I think a career is not like climbing a ladder – it’s more like climbing a tree. Focusing on climbing the next step on the ladder is a mistake. Sometimes when you are climbing a tree, it’s not linear - you might move sideways, which then helps you get up to the next level."

"I strongly believe that talent is spread evenly around the world, but opportunity is not."

"In the past, the middle class could count on a conveyor belt of higher education leading to university, leading to public sector employment. But now, that conveyor belt has stopped."

"I think at the moment we really are on the cusp of potentially a major change, and I'm quite optimistic about not just all the women we see rising to the top, but also all the young women coming up who will fill those jobs in the future toward gender parity."

"It is not okay to cast civility aside because the moment is too heated. We must cultivate a university culture that pushes back on the forces that seek to divide us. A culture that encourages empathy, not personal attacks on individuals or identities. Learning to speak, and listen with respect, that is a cherished Columbia value."

"We are living in a time of great divisions in our societies – between rich and poor, amongst different races and religions, and across fundamental values and principles. We see the rise of truculent nationalism and troubling fault lines in democracies across the world at a time when our most pressing challenges—such as climate change—require more international agreement. We are on the cusp of many technological revolutions in fields like artificial intelligence, neuroscience, quantum and nano technologies. At the same time, we are aging rapidly and coping with mental health challenges and worsening wellbeing."

"So let us forge a new social contract with society and with each other that will make us an exemplar of a great university in the 21st century. We will construct this on a foundation built by the wisdom of our past and forge new frontiers of scholarship and service. The legacy of the Columbians who came before will live on through us, as our legacy will live on through future generations, nurtured by the commitments we reaffirm here today."

"When I was inaugurated as Columbia’s 20th president on October 4, 2023, I called for strengthening the bond between universities and society through a recommitment to academia’s contribution to the common good. The horrors of the Hamas attack three days later, the ensuing war with Israel and the tragic loss of civilian lives in Gaza have tested that bond in unimaginable ways. I have seen the campus engulfed in tensions and divisions deepened by powerful external forces."

"The wave of protests, encampments, and building takeovers has since spread across the US and around the world. Whatever one thinks of the response of university leaders — denouncing hurtful rhetoric, enforcing rules and discipline, and summoning police to restore order — these are actions, not solutions. All of us who believe in higher education must now engage in serious soul searching about why this is happening. Only then can universities recover and begin to realise their potential to heal and unify."

"From my perspective, there are two issues at stake. First, we must do a better job of defining the boundaries between the free speech rights of one part of our community and the rights of others to be educated in a place free of discrimination and harassment."

"Free speech is the bedrock of academic inquiry and excellence. The threats it faces are real — many places ban books, curricula are sometimes determined by politicians rather than educational experts and scholars are at serious risk in many countries."

"For me, the lesson is clear. If colleges and universities cannot better define the boundaries between free speech and discrimination, government will move to fill that gap, and in ways that do not necessarily protect academic freedom. Just as our predecessors fought for desegregation and the admission of women, we need to create an educational environment where we fight all forms of prejudice, including against Arabs, Jews and Muslims."

"Rather than tearing ourselves apart, universities must rebuild the bonds within ourselves and between society and the academy based on our shared values and on what we do best: education, research, service and public engagement."

"Over the last few months, we have been patient in tolerating unauthorized demonstrations, including the encampment. Our academic leaders spent eight days engaging over long hours in serious dialogue in good faith with protest representatives. I thank them for their tireless effort. The University offered to consider new proposals on divestment and shareholder activism, to review access to our dual degree programs and global centers, to reaffirm our commitment to free speech, and to launch educational and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank. Some other universities have achieved agreement on similar proposals. Our efforts to find a solution went into Tuesday evening, but regrettably, we were unable to come to resolution."

"Columbia has a long and proud tradition of protest and activism on many important issues such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Today’s protesters are also fighting for an important cause, for the rights of Palestinians and against the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza. They have many supporters in our community and have a right to express their views and engage in peaceful protest."

"It is going to take time to heal, but I know we can do that together. I hope that we can use the weeks ahead to restore calm, allow students to complete their academic work, and honor their achievements at Commencement."

"We also must continue with urgency our ongoing dialogue on the important issues that have been raised in recent months, especially the balance between free speech and discrimination and the role of a university in contributing to better outcomes in the Middle East. Both are topics where I hope Columbia can lead the way in new thinking that will make us the epicenter, not just of protests, but of solutions to the world’s problems."

"Our values—as well as our duties under civil rights laws—compel us to condemn hate and to protect every member of our community from harassment and discrimination. Antisemitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply abhorrent."

"I know that many of our Jewish students, and other students as well, have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks. Many have left campus, and that is a tragedy. To those students and their families, I want to say to you clearly: You are a valued part of the Columbia community. This is your campus too. We are committed to making Columbia safe for everyone, and to ensuring that you feel welcome and valued."

"Additionally, the University offered to convene a faculty committee to address academic freedom and to begin a discussion on access and financial barriers to academic programs and global centers. The University also offered to make investments in health and education in Gaza, including supporting early childhood development and support for displaced scholars. There are important ideas that emerged from this dialogue, and we plan to explore pursuing them in the future."

"But we must take into account the rights of all members of our community. The encampment has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty."

"Like you, I am new to this campus, having started as Columbia’s 20th president in July. And I say as someone who has experienced change once or twice in my life, beginnings are exciting, and hard, and everything in between. They introduce us to new people and ideas, challenge us to adapt to new situations, and open our eyes to new ways of thinking about the world and our place within it."

"Universities and institutions of higher education have existed for millennia, stretching back to the schools of the ancients in places like China, Egypt, Greece, and India. There is something special, even magical, about the tradition of students and scholars coming together to create these unique environments of learning."

"Today, the critical questions we ask include, “What are you going to do with the training you’ve acquired?” and “How are you going to use the research you’ve conducted for the betterment of society?” Look behind me at the inscription on Low Library which says we want to be an institution that is “cherished by generation after generation for the advancement of the public good."

"I am honoured to speak today in the country of my birth, a country that has been a cradle of human civilization for millennia, on a topic that will determine the future of human civilization and whether it lasts for more millennia. I am an economist who has worked on development and environment issues for several decades and I wanted to speak to you about the economy of the future."

"But before doing that, let me start with a story from the past. Over 3000 years ago a different kind of climate change caused by volcanic eruptions and changing weather patterns resulted in persistent droughts that caused famines and political unrest in ancient Egypt. The pharaohs of the Ptolemaic dynasty such as Cleopatra went to great lengths to adapt – transferring grain from productive regions to drought plagued areas, opening up grain stores, crossbreeding cattle to develop more heat resistant animals, and providing tax relief. These foresighted efforts managed to prolong the Egyptian empire for a half century longer but ultimately one of the greatest empires the world has ever known collapsed because of the effects of climate change. The difference between then and now is that we are the cause of today’s climate change, and we have the means to stop it by changing our economy."

"What could the economy of the future look like? We have a choice. It could be one based on familiar technologies, markets and institutions. We could continue with polluted air and water where our children suffer from respiratory diseases; where our economies are struck by frequent shocks caused by unpredictable weather events which cause catastrophic losses; where people have to move across borders as their livelihoods are destroyed by rising sea levels or persistent droughts and rising temperatures; and one where the natural world continues to diminish."

"I can also paint a different picture of the economy of the future. One in which we make the needed investments and created cities in which we can move, breathe, and thrive. One in which the food we eat regenerates the earth rather than depletes it. Where our economies continue to grow and especially in poor countries, living standards continue to rise, where this growth is greener, more stable and where human well-being is enhanced through co-existence with nature."

"We know we are in difficult economic times with war, recession, and inflation. Where will the money for this investment come from? In tough times, we need to use our limited resources most efficiently. Given the history of climate change, we need an appropriate balance between responsibility and resources."

"Africa is responsible for only 1% of emissions but will be the hardest hit by climate change. That cannot be right. At the same time, many African countries are rich in sunshine, wind, rivers and forests. With support, they could leapfrog the dirty energy systems of the past and, if we create a better carbon market, provide a huge source of income for countries rich in carbon sinks."

"So, the economy of the future is our choice. We face a classic intertemporal investment problem – incur some investment costs now with high returns later or opt for inaction or not enough action but incur very high costs and risks later. Even if you do not take into account future generations (which makes these arguments much, much stronger), it seems to me the choice is clear. Climate change and biodiversity loss are here, and we are already suffering the consequences. Unlike the Pharaohs, we can overcome this climate change by choosing a different kind of economy for the future."

"The benefits of open capital markets are clear. They facilitate the flow of finance to where it would be most productive and help ensure global resources are allocated most efficiently. They allow savers and investors to diversify portfolios beyond national borders, and they provide a greater range of funding sources to fast growing economies and businesses"

"The most obvious way to take international considerations into account is by treating risks emanating from abroad as an important input when setting domestic macroprudential policy."

"Reciprocity also helps address the old problem of asymmetric adjustment of global imbalances. Suppose a deficit country wishes to contain the supply of credit and build resilience in its financial system by raising the buffer. If a surplus country whose banks are lending to the deficit country reciprocates, its banks should be incentivised to lend less to the deficit economy, and more to their domestic economy. That should increase domestic demand in the surplus country, and hence demand for deficit country exports, reducing the overall level of imbalances."

"The growth of market-based finance and asset management is creating new sources of funding, adding welcome diversity to the financial system, particularly for emerging markets. And in some ways these flows are less risky – for example the average maturity of international securities issued by emerging markets is 10 years, reducing rollover risk and exposure to a sudden flight of capital."

"There are many ways in which co-operation on macro-prudential policies could be deepened further. Options which could warrant further investigation range from formalising the exchange of information, to frameworks for reciprocity for tools beyond the countercyclical capital buffer, to common stress test scenarios and risk assessment that are used across the world."

"Steering Columbia University through the choppy waters of anti-Israel student protests was never going to be easy for Minouche Shafik, a member of the UK House of Lords who took over as president of the university in New York after a period of relative calm running the London School of Economics.[..] Shafik’s decision to call in the police to break up a student protest camp on the university lawn appalled many on both sides of the dispute. Protesters and their supporters among the academic community complained about police brutality and the targeting of pro-Palestinian campaigners, while Republican defenders of Israel accused Shafik of failing to act quickly enough."

"I go through the steps one by one, no matter how long it takes. It's like running a race with them, and you're out of breath sometimes, but it's worth it when we make it to the finish line"

"Let's be honest: The best science students are going to learn anyhow. They don't need to be pushed. I prefer to teach students who hate physics. I tell them not to be intimidated. They can all do it once the fear is removed.""

"I enjoy working with undergraduates and find nothing more rewarding than seeing a student understand who was having a hard time"

"Our students would not accept it if we stood still; we would lose them. I learn students’ names and encourage them to participate. I ask for volunteers to go to the blackboard. The first time, girls especially will say, 'I have never been to the blackboard.' I say, ‘Come with me, don't worry; help me.'”"

"No job is ugly, unless it's made ugly by the person doing it. In the Heroic Age of Basil II: Emperor of Byzantium (in Greek), 1911, chapter XIII"