Thus spake Alan Rick­man as Hans Gru­ber in the 1988 Die Hard: “‘When Alexan­der saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to con­quer.’ Ben­e­fits of a clas­si­cal education.” Hans here affects to present a clas­si­cal quo­ta­tion, whose only antique source is a passage in Plutarch’s Moralia that attributes Alexander’s ( Read more... )

Σωκράτης
λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος ὅτι “πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει,” καὶ ποταμοῦ ῥοῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ ὄντα λέγει ὡς “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.”
Socrates
Heracleitus says, you know, that all things move and nothing remains still, and he likens the universe to the current of a river, saying that you cannot step twice into the same stream.
- ( Read more... )

„Niemals geboren zu werden wäre das beste für die sterblichen Menschenkinder“, „Aber“, setzen die Weisen der „Fliegenden Blätter“ hinzu, „unter hunderttausend Menschen passiert dies kaum einem ( Read more... )

ὀψέ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά
-Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos I, 287 ≈ Oracula Sibyllina VIII, 14 ≈ Plutarch, Moralia, “De sera numinis vindicta” 549d ≈ Parœmiographi Græci, C396Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein ( Read more... )

And so began the great central struggle of political literature, between the powerful men and women who want their deeds recorded and the literary figures who are able to record them in a memorable way. As long as politics lasts, the politicians will feel that they deserve a better press; and the media will feel honour-bound to tease the ( Read more... )

I canti dell’Inferno della Divina Commedia recitati da Vittorio Gassman: ( Read more... )