Robin Lane Fox Quotes

Alexander was not the first Greek to be honoured as a god for political favour ...

Gardens can be sharp and spiky as well as rose-embowered and honeysuckle-twined: there are corners and settings where thistles are not such an asinine taste after all.

Among the conservative Greek opinion there would be no regrets that Alexander the Greek leader was invading the barbarians.

Excavations at Ai Khanoum on the northern border of modern Afghanistan have produced great quantities of Greek inscriptions and even the remnants of a philosophical treatise originally on papyrus. One of the most interesting is the base of a dedication by one Klearchos, perhaps the known student of Aristotle, that records his bringing to this new Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus, the traditional maxims from the shrine of Apollo at Delphi concerning the five ages of man:

In childhood, seemliness
In youth, self-control
In middle age, justice
In old age, wise council
In death, painlessness

I wish I was here, or I wish I was there...' In our age of global travel we are all potential heirs to the simile of Hera's flight.

Gardeners work with an ever-receding ideal of perfection; no sooner is something growing well than they see how to place it better or give it a better neighbor. To other's eyes, all may look as well as could be expected, but a good gardener's eye sees more to be improved.