People From Greece

"In summing up his extended survey of linguistic evidence Witzel tells us that the mode of the IA entry is "archaeologically still little traced"; it is, he states, securely traced in the texts (horses, chariots, religion etc) and from linguistics and possibly from future studies of the male Y chromosome (2001: 55-56). Here we have an attempt at falsification ("little" when in fact it is none) and wishful thinking. Neither horses and chariots nor linguistic phenomena, such as Witzel provides, prove any entry. They are interpretations of facts by a mind already colored by the AIT."

"In this study Witzel talks of a peaceful immigration but also uses the terms "battles" and "campaigns" (324), "initial conquest" (326) and "frequent warfare" (339) thus indicating that beneath the lipservice to "migration" (which became fashionable) lurks the notion of invasion."

"Saptasindhu as the name of the ancient region of the Seven Rivers in N-W India and Pakistan - countries which did not exist at that period. I use it as a bahuvrīhi, as many others have done before me, although in the RV we find references only to the Seven Rivers saptá síndhavaḥ (and different oblique cases of the plural). Now (e6) Avestan has the name Haptahǝndu as a place, like Airyana Vaējah, Raŋhā, Haetumant, etc, from which the Iranians had passed before settling down in eastern Iran, then spreading west and north. But what is this name? Yes, hapta- is the numeral ‘seven’ but what of hǝndhu? It is a fairly obvious Avestan correspondence to the Sanskrit síndhu. Now hǝndu is an isolated occurrence. The stem does not otherwise exist in Avestan. Hindu appears in Old Persian indicating the Indian province under the Achaemenids, and that is all. The interpretation ‘seven rivers’ comes from the Sanskrit collocation. But the Avestan for river is usually θraotah- (=S srotas) and raodah-.... Surely nobody would be so foolhardy as to suggest that the IAs took this otherwise unattested stem from Iranian and used it so commonly and productively."

"You have to build an industry. You have to be very nimble, and you have to be connected to your customers, and that can't be done with just one company."

"He is down-to-earth and a grassroots man who actually built the system."

"We have to be realistic about the history of [touch-screen] technology. We have to remember that this is not new — this has been done, this has been tried before."

"I couldn't type on it and I still can't type on it, and a lot of my friends can't type on it. It’s hard to type on a piece of glass."

"I was thirty-three when I made A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and many leading ladies around town were considerably older. It was the first movie of Elia Kazan and for Aunt Cissie he'd wanted , who took one look at this little squirt and passed. I mean, nobody knew who he was at that stage. So he asked me and I ran with this sensational part—although he never used me again. [...] The movie made Kazan a hot commodity, but it made me a supporting character actress before my time."

"He was from the theatah, meaning he knew nothing about lighting, lenses, close-ups. All that was done for him by our ace cinematographer, , who actually asked Zanuck for a directing credit. He was turned down."

"The Group was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old. They were magnetic, fearless leaders. During the summer I was an apprentice, they were entertaining in a Jewish summer camp... At the end of the summer they said to me: "You may have talent for something, but it's certainly not acting."

"He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst, and a feared father of a Jewish home.... [H]e was the force that held the thirty-odd members of the theatre together, and made them permanent."

"I went to him and told him I had no such experiences in life and didn't know where to get the emotions I'd need. He was very patient with me and let me ramble on about my misgivings and anxieties. What he did, in a sense, was lock up all this intensity inside me so it wouldn't be dissipated. He was marvelous."

"Überschauen wir diese Ausführungen, so kann kein Zweifel bestehen, daß die Mystik des Evagrius in ihrer völlig konsequenten Geschlossenheit dem Buddhismus wesentlich näher steht als dem Christentum."

"Once there was a meeting at The Cells about some matter and Abba Evagrius spoke. The priest said to him: “Abba Evagrius, we know that if you were in your homeland you would probably have been a bishop and the head of many [clergy]; but now you are living here as an alien.” He was pricked in his conscience but not disturbed. Nodding his head, he said to him: “It is true, father; nevertheless, ‘I have spoken once; I will add nothing the second time’” (Job 40:5)."

"The main contemplations are five, under which all contemplation is comprised. And they say that the first is the contemplation of the adorable and holy Trinity, and that the second and the third are the contemplation of the incorporeal and the corporeal realities, and that the fourth and the fifth are the contemplation of the Judgment and of Providence."

"There was a time when evilness did not exist, and there will be a time when it will no more exist, whereas there was no time when virtue did not exist, and there will be no time when it will not exist. For the germs of virtue are impossible to destroy."

"34. The mind is the temple of the Holy Trinity."

"26. Prayer is a state of the mind destructive of every earthly mental representation."

"27. Prayer is a state of the mind that arises under the influence of the unique light of the Holy Trinity."

"23. The mind cannot see the place of God within itself, unless it has transcended all the mental representations associated with objects. Nor will it transcend them, if it has not put off the passions that bind it to sensible objects through mental representations. And it will lay aside the passions through the virtues, and simple thoughts through spiritual contemplation; and this in turn it will lay aside when there appears to it the light."

"Blessed is the one who has reached the knowledge that cannot be abolished (beyond what cannot be, it cannot be gone)."

"150. Just as sight is the most worthy of the sense, so also is prayer the most divine of the virtues."

"153. When you give yourself to prayer, rise above every other joy — then you will find true prayer."

"125. A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man."

"123. Happy is the monk who considers all men as god — after God."

"124. A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all."

"122. Happy is the monk who views the welfare and progress of all men with as much joy as if it were his own."

"2. If someone should want to behold the state of his mind, let him deprive himself of all mental representations, and then he shall behold himself resembling sapphire or the colour of heaven. It is impossible to accomplish this without impassibility, for he will need God to collaborate with him and breathe into him the connatural light."

"119. Happy is the spirit that becomes free of all matter and is stripped of all at the time of prayer."

"120. Happy is the spirit that attains to complete unconsciousness of all sensible experience at the time of prayer."

"118. Happy is the spirit which, praying with distraction, goes on increasing its desire for God."

"4. The state of the mind is an intelligible height resembling the colour of heaven, to which the light of the Holy Trinity comes in the time of prayer."

"114. Do not by any means strive to fashion some image or visualize some form at the time of prayer."

"117. Let me repeat this saying of mine that I once expressed on some other occasions: Happy is the spirit that attains to the perfect formlessness at the time of prayer."

"113. By true prayer a monk becomes another angel, for he ardently longs to see the face of the Father in heaven."

"121. Happy is the man who thinks himself no better than dirt."

"83. The singing of Psalms quiets the passions and calms the intemperance of the body. Prayer, on the other hand, prepares the spirit to put its own powers into operation."

"85. Psalm-singing is an image of wisdom which is many-sided; prayer is the prelude to immaterial and uniform knowledge."

"70. You will not be able to pray purely if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of concepts."

"64. The proof of apatheia is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life."

"The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions for absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have a full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he engulfs it in avaricious thoughts and then hands it over to the demon of self-esteem."

"60. If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theologian."

"In the whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem."

"Just as it is possible to think of water both while thirsty and while not thirsty, so it is possible to think of gold with greed and without greed. The same applies to other things."

"65. If you long to pray, then avoid all that is opposed to prayer. Then when God draws near, he has only to go along with you."

"Do you desire, then, to embrace this life of solitude, and to seek out the blessings of stillness? If so, abandon the cares of the world, and the principalities and powers that lie behind them: free yourself from attachment to material things, from domination by passions and desires, so that as a stranger to all this you may attain true stillness."

"Do not desire wealth for giving to the poor."

"52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis [withdrawal]."

"52. The state of prayer can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm. It snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love."

"86. Knowledge! The great possession of man. It is a fellow-worker with prayer, acting to awaken the power of thought to contemplate the divine knowledge."