Gilbert Murray

It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history. ”

Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle. ”

Be careful in dealing with a man who cares nothing for comfort or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you little purchase upon his soul. ”

The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths. ”

The life and liberty and property and happiness of the common man throughout the world are at the absolute mercy of a few persons whom he has never seen, involved in complicated quarrels that he has never heard of. ”

The fashions of the ages vary in this direction and that, but they vary for the most part from a central road which was struck out by the imagination of Greece. ”

The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word. ”

Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading. ”