Greek City States

Famous quotes containing the words greek, city and/or states:

    “I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “I counted two and seventy stenches,
    All well defined and several stinks!
    Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
    The river Rhine, it is well known,
    Doth wash your city of Cologne;
    But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
    Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
    —Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    “The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights—that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)