Parnassus Quotes

“A Dr van 't Hoff of the veterinary college at Utrecht... finds it a less arduous task to mount Pegasus (evidently borrowed from the veterinary school) and to proclaim in his La Chemie dans l' espace how, during his bold fight to the top of the chemical Parnassus, the atoms appeared to him to have grouped themselves together throughout universal space. ... I should have taken no notice of this matter had not Wislicenus oddly enough written a preface to the pamphlet, and not by way of a joke but in all seriousness recommended it a worthwhile performance.”
― Hermann Kolbe

“Our king Apollo, O child of mighty Zeus,
when you were born your father gave you
a gold headband and a lyre of tortoise shell,
and more: a chariot drawn by swans. You were
to go to Delphi and the Kastalian springs
whose waters are the gift of broad Kephissos,
and there deliver justice to the Hellenes
through the oracles. But when you seized the reins,

you made the swans sail north to the distant land
of the Hyperboreans, and though the Delphians
begged you to return—with paeans of flutes
and circles of women dancing about the tripod—

Apollo, you remained to rule that people
through the long year. Came the season when the tripod
rings loud and clear in Delphi, you turned the swans
to Parnassos. It was high noon of summer
when you glided back from the far northlands;
swallows and nightingales were singing; cicadas
also sang about you; silver brooks poured down
from Kastalia, and the great river Kephissos

threw blue-foaming waves into the bright wind, yes,
even the waters knew a god was coming home.”
― Alkaios

“Think of this small book as a passport, a document that details the dogs and people who have traveled far and wide, and somehow, miraculously, found their way back to where they belong - to dog heaven, book heaven, reader heaven. Home.”
― Ann Patchett, The Shop Dogs of Parnassus