Gilbert Murray > Quotes

“Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.”
― Gilbert Murray, The Bacchae

“Things of a day! what are we and what not? A dream of a shaddow is man; yet when some god-given splendor falls, a glory of light comes over him and his life is sweet

(Pindar)”
― Gilbert Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature

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

“Probably throughout history the worst things ever done in the world on a large scale by decent people have been done in the name of religion, and I do not think that has entirely ceased to be true at the present day.”
― Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion

“Things of a day! what are we and what not? A dream of a shaddow is man; yet when some god-given splendor falls, a glory of light comes over him and his life is sweet”
― Gilbert Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature

“Once you worship an imaginary quasi-human being who throws the lightning, you are in a dilemma. Either you have to admit that you are worshipping and flattering a being with no moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous, or else you have to invent reasons for his wrath against the people who happen to be struck. And they are pretty sure to be bad reasons. The god, if personal, becomes capricious and cruel.”
― Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion

“He did not seek her for her righteousness; he sought her because her beauty spoke like a god to him!”
― Gilbert Murray, Andromache: A Play in Three Acts

“They are all dead now, Diocletian and Ignatius, Cyril and Hypatia, Julian and Basil, Athanasius and Arîus: every party has yielded up its persecutors and its martyrs, its hates and slanders and aspirations and heroisms, to the arms of that great Silence whose secrets they all claimed so loudly to have read. Even the dogmas for which they fought might seem to be dead too. For if Julian and Sallustius, Gregory and John Chrysostom, were to rise again and see the world as it now is, they would probably feel their personal differences melt away in comparison with the vast difference between their world and this. They fought to the death about this credo and that, but the same spirit was in all of them.”
― Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion

“Nay, death should not come for suffering. Death should come when there is no hope left for any one thing in the world.”
― Gilbert Murray, Andromache - A Play in Three Acts

“On the surface all is new writing, clean and self-assertive. Underneath, dim but indelible in the very fibres of the parchment, lie the characters of many ancient aspirations and raptures and battles which his conscious mind has rejected or utterly forgotten. And forgotten things, if there be real life in them, will sometimes return out of the dust, vivid to help still in the forward groping of humanity. A religious system like that of Eusebius or Marcus, or even Sallustius, was not built up without much noble life and strenuous thought and a steady passion for the knowledge of God. Things of that make do not, as a rule, die for ever.”
― Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion