The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung. Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear he’ll not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is capable.

It was modesty which in Greece invented the word “philosopher” and left the splendid arrogance of calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit — the modesty of such monsters of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras, as Plato.

We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in the apprenticeship to virtue.

Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.

The God that reigns in Olympus is Number Eternal.