Alexandria Quotes

Another factor: Christianity offered opportunities for advancement in the church to intelligent young men, some of whom might otherwise have become mathematicians or scientists. Bishops and presbyters were generally exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, and from taxation. A bishop such as Cyril of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan could exercise considerable political power, much more than a scholar at the Museum in Alexandria or the Academy in Athens. This was something new. Under paganism religious offices had gone to men of wealth or political power, rather than wealth and power going to men of religion. For instance, Julius Caesar and his successors won the office of supreme pontiff, not as a recognition of piety or learning, but as a consequence of their political power. ~ Steven Weinberg

All was not lost when the Library at Alexandria was burned ~ Mark Wallace Maguire

The Library of Alexandria?" I ask. "Didn't that burn down?"
Mrs Philipoulus scoffs. "Damn fool Hypatia. Athena tried to convince her to install a sprinkler system. But no-o-o, no one was going to tell the librarianatrix how to run her library. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

The Lord has turned all our sunsets into sunrise. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Eva," Jason said, leaning over to his fiancée as I took a seat next to Tyler. "How you doin'?"
Eva made a face and pushed him away. "Nope, doesn't work for everyone. Not even you."
"But it's "The Joey"-- it has to work!" Jason said, sitting back and taking a sip from his water bottle. ~ Alexandria Rhodes

What reason is there in the law's prohibiting a man from "wearing woman's clothing?" Is it not that it would have us to be manly, and to be effeminate neither in person and actions, nor in thought and word ? For it would have the man, that devotes himself to the truth, to be masculine both in acts of endurance and patience, in life, conduct, word, and discipline by night and by day; even if the necessity were to occur, of witnessing by the shedding of his blood. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Since there is no final destination, do your best to fall in love with the journey. ~ Rachel Alexandria

The Lord ate from a common bowl, and asked the disciples to sit on the grass. He washed their feet, with a towel wrapped around His waist - He, who is the Lord of the universe! ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Want me to say it? Want me to confess what makes me an actual felon and reserves me a choice spot in hell?"

"Please, Alexandria Patra," Preton said, "tell me all your regrets."

Her eyes narrowed. "I taught children to surrender their developing minds to concepts like the greater good or the good of society which can't exist in any form in this world without actual kids being trampled underneath their untouchable banners."

Pointing at her own chest, she added, "I taught children that in order to live up to those 'higher' ideals they must be obedient - to others, must sacrifice their dreams - to the needs of others. I taught them it was more important to be a part of a group than to stand on their own judgment. I told the non-conforming kids they should feel guilty for wanting to live on their own terms."

Alexa swept a hand forward, pointing it at Preton. "I then delivered every ego-stripped, dream-crushed child to the power mongers of the world like you, who will use this universally accepted mirage of morality to control them. ~ S.W. Southwick

I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth, so that from geometry, music, grammar, and philosophy itself, culling what is usefule, he guards the faith against assault. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

The first physician who is known to have counted the pulse, Herophilos of Alexandria (born 300 B.C.), lived in Egypt. ~ James Henry Breasted

THOMASINA:
But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue! ~ Tom Stoppard

The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs of status can't save us, that welcome - both offering and receiving - is our source of safety. Various chapters and verses of this book would remind us that we are wanted and even occasionally delighted in, despite the unfortunate truth that we are greedy-grabby, self-referential, indulgent, overly judgmental, and often hysterical. Somehow that book "went missing." Or when the editorial board of bishops pored over the canonical lists from Jerusalem and Alexandria, they arbitrarily nixed the book that states unequivocally that you are wanted, even rejoiced in. ~ Anne Lamott

In law school, the concept of the jury is taught through the metaphor of a black box. Into the box, evidence and the law go. Out of the box, a verdict comes. But a black box doesn't have feelings. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Lyle and Luann are strict Pentecostal. They don't have indoor plumbing, and decades from now, at the time of the trials, they still won't. They don't play music. They take in children who need help, they're kind like that - but sometimes, with Luann's sternness and the way they keep taking in children even when the cupboards are bare, you never can tell if it's generosity or if it's that God won't give them enough suffering to prove their faith to him, and so they'll arrange privation themselves. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

...the test of truth is proof combined with reason.

Philo of Alexandria; Book 30: The Special Laws, IV ~ Philo Of Alexandria

That savage, he thought. Don't think you can push me aside so easily.
Shark attack! Look out, cara, he is swimming toward you. Aidan deliberately lightened the mood between Alexandria and himself. ~ Christine Feehan

I remember a new heaviness in my body, but maybe that's the work of time and my looking back. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Game... Set... Match Bitch!

~Alexandria Bell ~ April Nichols Baker

The existence of any library, even mine, allows readers a sense of what their craft is truly about, a craft that struggles against the stringencies of time by bringing fragments of the past into their present. It grants them a glimpse, however secret or distant, into the minds of other human beings, and allows them a certain knowledge of their own condition through the stories stored here for their perusal. Above all, it tells readers that their craft consist of the power to remember, actively, through the prompt of the page, selected moments of the human experience. This was the great practice established by the Library of Alexandria. ~ Alberto Manguel

You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Marcus?" Alex faced us.
"Yes, Alexandria?"
One side of her lips tipped up as her gaze slid to mine. "Does it bother you that Aiden and I have been. how do I put this? He's seen me naked? Multiple times. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

We must not cast away riches which can benefit our neighbor. Possessions were made to be possessed; goods are called goods because they do good, and they have been provided by God for the good of men: they are at hand and serve as the material, the instruments for a good use in the hand of him who knows how to use them. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

It is possible to be solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts. ~ Syncletica Of Alexandria

Although I was raised in Canada and the U.K., my roots are in Egypt through my father, in a family line that stretches back generations and runs along the Nile, from the concrete of Cairo to the coast of Alexandria. ~ Shereen El Feki

The Greek philosophers have compiled many works with persuasiveness and much skill in words; but what fruit have they to show for this such as has the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were persuasive enough until they died; ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

What can I say? I cleaned up nicely ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. ~ Kenneth Clark

There's always someone bigger and badder who can knock you off your perch - even if you're me. Never forget it and you don't have to worry about corruption. You'll be too afraid with watching your own back.
Alexandria "Dria" McAndrews ~ C.J. Ellisson

As two pieces of wax fused together make one so he who receives Holy Communion is so united with Christ that Christ is in him and he is in Christ. ~ Cyril Of Alexandria

How DARE you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, Mighty Caesar! Rape, murder, pillage thousands, even millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought! ~ William Shakespeare

He who receives Communion is made holy and Divinized in soul and body in the same way that water, set over a fire, becomes boiling ... Communion works like yeast that has been mixed into dough so that it leavens the whole mass; ... Just as by melting two candles together you get one piece of wax, so, I think, one who receives the Flesh and Blood of Jesus is fused together with Him by this Communion, and the soul finds that he is in Christ and Christ is in him ~ Cyril Of Alexandria

It was in Alexandria that the circumference of the earth was first measured, the sun fixed at the center of the solar system, the workings of the brain and the pulse illuminated, the foundations of anatomy and physiology established, the definitive editions of Homer produced. It was in Alexandria that Euclid had codified geometry. ~ Stacy Schiff

And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.' ~ Clement Of Alexandria

A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Since the fact that pleasure is not a good thing is admitted from the fact that certain pleasures are evil, by this reason good appears evil, and evil good. And then, if we choose some pleasures and shun others, it is not every pleasure that is a good thing.

Similarly, also, the same rule holds with pains, some of which we endure, and others we shun. But choice and avoidance are exercised according to knowledge; so that it is not pleasure that is the good thing, but knowledge by which we shall choose a pleasure at a certain time, and of a certain kind. Now the martyr chooses the pleasure that exists in prospect through the present pain. If pain is conceived as existing in thirst, and pleasure in drinking, the pain that has preceded becomes the efficient cause of pleasure. But evil cannot be the efficient cause of good. Neither, then, is the one thing nor the other evil. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

I guess there were two types of people in the world, those who sat around a fire, staring into the flames, and those who started the fire.
Seth and I started the fire, and then we danced around it. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. ~ Philo Of Alexandria

There is one river of Truth which receives tributaries from every side. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Pantaenus was one of these and is said to have gone to India. It is reported that among persons there who knew of Christ, he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had anticipated his own arrival. For Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them, and left with them the writing of Matthew in the Hebrew language, which they had preserved till that time. After many good deeds, Pantaenus finally became the head of the school at Alexandria, and expounded the treasures of divine doctrine both orally and in writing. ~ Eusebius

the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

An awful lot of hokum is talked about love, you know. An importance is ascribed to it that is entirely at variance with fact. People talk as though it were self-evidently the greatest of human values. Nothing is less self-evident. Until Plato dressed his sentimental sensuality in a captivating literary form the ancient world laid no more stress on it than was sensible; the healthy realism of the Muslims has never looked upon it as anything but a physical need; it was Christianity, buttressing its emotional claims with neo-Platonism, that made it into the end an aim, the reason, the justification of life. But Christianity was the religion of slaves. It offered the weary and the heavy-laden heaven to compensate them in the future for their misery in this world and the opiate of love to enable them to bear it in the present. And like every drug it enervated and destroyed those who became subject to it. For two thousand years it's suffocated us. It's weakened our wills and lessened our courage. In this modern world we live in we know that almost everything is more important to us than love, we know that only the soft and the stupid allow it to affect their actions, and yet we pay it a foolish lip-service. In books, on the stage, in the pulpit, on the platform the same old sentimental rubbish is talked that was used to hoodwink the slaves of Alexandria. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

What does God think of spurious beauty, rejecting utterly as He does all falsehood? ~ Clement Of Alexandria

It was given to Abba Anthony to see a doctor in Alexandria who was simply and humbly doing what God had given him to do. His inner being stood in the presence of the Lord as he worked and prayed. According to the literature of the desert, this is the goal of our life in this world as it is set out for all Christians, a goal that the solitary monk tried to attain through his special vocation. ~ Elisabeth Behr-Sigel

I was gonna be super pissed in the afterlife if I died a virgin in this crap hole. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final. ~ Hypatia

ἄφες καὶ ἀφεθήσεταί σοι, βιαζομένης
ὥσπερ τῆς ἐντολῆς εἰς σωτηρίαν δι' ὑπερβολὴν ἀγαθότητος.

'Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you'; the commandment, as it were, compelling people to salvation, out of a superabundance of goodness. (Strom. 7.14.86.6) ~ Clement Of Alexandria

So I try something new. Not turning my back to the past, not fleeing it, but extending a hand. I say to the past, come with me, then, as I live. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Live from Babylon and Ur, From Athens and Alexandria and Rome, The voices of a thousand generations, Press us, Urge us on-. ~ Jack McDevitt

Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation? ~ Barry Lopez

Idolatry, especially that of the body, is for Athanasius a kind of barometer, measuring the perversity into which humans have fallen, the degree to which their knowledge of God has been lost, and the extent to which the image of God in them obscured, the consequence of which is corruption and death. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Disagreements over the interpretation of Genesis 1 are not new. Early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine wrestled with this issue hundreds of years ago. However, the debate within Christian circles over the age of creation has intensified during the last 150 years, largely in response to the Darwinian theory of evolution. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

Plotinus had been born in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century A.D. Like many brilliant critics, he thought he understood what he had read better than the author himself. ~ Paul Strathern

The man credited with inventing the comma, colon, and full stop punctuation marks was a librarian of Alexandria called Aristophanes. ~ Aristophanes

But God has no natural relation to us, as the authors of the heresies will have it; neither on the supposition of His having made us of nothing, nor on that of having formed us from matter; since the former did not exist at all, and the latter is totally distinct from God, unless we shall dare to say that we are a part of Him, and of the same essence as God. And I know not how one, who knows God, can bear to hear this when he looks to our life, and sees in what evils we are involved. For thus it would turn out, which it were impiety to utter, that God sinned in [certain] portions, if the portions are parts of the whole and complementary of the whole; and if not complementary, neither can they be parts. But God being by nature rich in pity, in consequence of His own goodness, cares for us, though neither portions of Himself, nor by nature His children. And this is the greatest proof of the goodness of God: that such being our relation to Him, and being by nature wholly estranged, He nevertheless cares for us. For the affection in animals to their progeny is natural, and the friendship of kindred minds is the result of intimacy. But the mercy of God is rich toward us, who are in no respect related to Him; I say either in our essence or nature, or in the peculiar energy of our essence, but only in our being the work of His will. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

He alone can remit sins who is appointed our Master by the Father of all; He only is able to discern obedience from disobedience. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Years later, I remember the waxy taste of the yellow paint, the papery taste of splintered wood, the sharp metallic of the graphite. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Do you love him?" I blurted out.
Laadan swallowed and a long pause followed. In the gap, I heard someone moving around in the kitchen.
I started to grin. "You like him."
Looking away, her lips pursed.
I nudged her with my elbow. "You like him a lot."
She drew herself up. "Your father - "
"Is the love of your life?"
Alexandria," she snapped, but there was no real heat to her tone. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

God became man so that man might become a god. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

The number 6 was the first perfect number, and the number of creation. The adjective "perfect" was attached that are precisely equal to the sum of all the smaller numbers that divide into them, as 6=1+2+3. The next such number, incidentally, is 28=1+2+4+7+14, followed by 496=1+2+4+8+16+31+62+124+248; by the time we reach the ninth perfect number, it contains thirty-seven digits. Six is also the product of the first female number, 2, and the first masculine number, 3. The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (ca. 20 B.C.-c.a. A.D. 40), whose work brought together Greek philosophy and Hebrew scriptures, suggested that God created the world in six days because six was a perfect number. The same idea was elaborated upon by St. Augustine (354-430) in The City of God: "Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true: God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist." Some commentators of the Bible regarded 28 also as a basic number of the Supreme Architect, pointing to the 28 days of the lunar cycle. The fascination with perfect numbers penetrated even into Judaism, and their study was advocated in the twelfth century by Rabbi Yosef ben Yehudah Ankin in his book, Healing of the Souls. ~ Mario Livio

What if there was a disease in Alexandria, she thought, and everybody died but me?
I'd go live at the library, she told herself. The notion was cheering. She saw herself reading by candlelight, shadows flickering on the ceiling above the labyrinth of shelves. She could take a suitcase from home–peanut butter and crackers, a blanket, a change of clothes–and pull together two of the big armchairs in the Reading Room to sleep on… ~ Donna Tartt

They say I can't last a day in the real world. I say you wouldn't survive one night in mine. ~ Asking Alexandria

Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. ~ Iain Pears

If in this life there are so many ways for purification and repentance, how much more should there be after death! The purification of souls, when separated from the body, will be easier. We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Through death deathlessness has been made known to us, ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

It is interesting to observe what the Cynic teaching became when it was popularized. In the early part of the third century B.C., the cynics were the fashion, especially in Alexandria. They published little sermons pointing out how easy it is to do without material possessions, ~ Bertrand Russell

Euclid, who was still, when I was young, the sole acknowledged text-book of geometry for boys, lived in Alexandria, about 300 B.C., a few years after the death of Alexander and Aristotle. ~ Anonymous

Ten million light-years from now
bathed in the radiation of a time without time
are the bones of a girl who loved Ryann Bird.

In the dust left over from our supernova
atoms spread farther and wider than hope
are the pieces of the heart of the girl who
loved Alexandria the Great. ~ K. Ancrum

In ancient times before the divine sojourn of the Savior took place, even to the saints death was terrible; all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample on it as it were nothing and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Merlin had, according to legend, created the White Council of Wizards from the chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire. He plunged into the flames of the burning Library of Alexandria to save the most critical texts, helped engineer the Catholic Church as a vessel to preserve knowledge and culture during Europe's Dark Ages, and leapt tall cathedrals in a single bound. ~ Jim Butcher

The area occupied by the Christians in Syria and Palestine, called Outremer because of its location beyond the Mediterranean Sea, was a thin coastal strip extending from Armenia in the north to the borders of the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt in the south. By 1109, the Christian territory was divided into four large states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, extending from Gaza to Beirut; the County of Tripoli, from Beirut to Margat; the Principality of Antioch, from Margat to Alexandria; and the County of Edessa, which stretched northeast all the way to present-day Urfa. These Latin states were governed by noble courts in much the same way as their counterparts in Europe. They were often rocked by dynastic disputes, which, together with the scarcity of available troops and the latent threat of Muslim attack, put the security of the Christian population in a constant state of uncertainty. ~ Barbara Frale

We must not, then, aspire to please the multitude. For we do not practice what will please them, but what we know is remote from their disposition. "Let us not be desirous of vainglory," says the apostle, "provoking one another, envying one another. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach
This statement of the mastery of God,
Who, with magnificent irony, gave
Me at once both books and night

Of this city of books He pronounced rulers
These lightless eyes, who can only
Peruse in libraries of dreams
The insensible paragraphs that yield

With every new dawn. Vainly does the day
Lavish on them its infinite books,
Arduous as the arduous manuscripts
Which at Alexandria did perish.

Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us)
Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens;
I aimlessly weary at the confines
Of this tall and deep blind library.

Encyclopedias, atlases, the East
And the West, centuries, dynasties
Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies
Do walls proffer, but pointlessly.

Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade
Explore with my indecisive cane;
To think I had imagined Paradise
In the form of such a library.

Something, certainly not termed
Fate, rules on such things;
Another had received in blurry
Afternoons both books and shadow.

Wandering through these slow corridors
I often feel with a vague and sacred dread
That I am another, the dead one, who must
Have trodden the same steps at the same time.

Which of the two is now writing this poem
Of a plural I and of a single shadow?
How important ~ Jorge Luis Borges

HE didn't realize she was his everything until he gave her up for everything else. ~ Alexandria Heather

You mean we won't get to run through burning buildings?" I could see he wanted to laugh, but instead he watched me intently. "What? Why are you staring at me?"
"I'm not staring. I'm observing."
I smiled through my tears. "And what do you observe?"
He brushed his lips against my ear. "A brave young woman who has always fought for what was right, even when it was unpopular. A woman who can't return to the land of her birth, but is wlcome to cross the seas and rebuild Alexandria in mine. And a woman who has suffered enough in Rome and deserves happiness for a change. Will you come to Mauretania and be my queen?"
He drew back to look at me, but I held him closer. "Yes."
"Just yes?"
I nodded and pressed my lips against his. ~ Michelle Moran

There are other special problems connected with the discovery of ancient cities. Alexandria was ravaged by fires and street fighting, and its ancient waterfront is underwater. Some discoveries at Pompeii were not revealed for many decades, because the wall paintings are so pornographic. ~ Norman F. Cantor

He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

For the observed difference in the shadow lengths, the distance between Alexandria and Syene had to be about seven degrees along the surface of the Earth; that is, if you imagine the sticks extending down to the center of the Earth, they would there intersect at an angle of seven degrees. Seven degrees is something like one-fiftieth of three hundred and sixty degrees, the full circumference of the Earth. Eratosthenes knew that the distance between Alexandria and Syene was approximately 800 kilometers, because he hired a man to pace it out. Eight hundred kilometers times 50 is 40,000 kilometers: so that must be the circumference of the Earth. ~ Carl Sagan

It is far better to be happy than to have our bodies act as graveyards to animals. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Until well into the evening, when the vermillion sun plunged precipitously into the harbor, Alexandria remained a swirl of reds and yellows, a swelling kaleidoscope of music, chaos, and color. ~ Stacy Schiff

Heracles is worshipped as a god by the Greeks because he fought with humans equal to himself and killed wild beasts by guile. But what was that compared to what was done by the Word, who banished sicknesses and demons and death itself from human beings? ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

I have been thinking about the girl I met last night in the mirror: dark on the marble-ivory white: glossy black hair: deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink because they are nervous, curious, turned to sexual curiosity. ~ Lawrence Durrell

... Because every ruler celebrated his conquests by setting torch to the nearest library. Did not Julius Caesar incinerate the scrolls in the great library at Alexandria during his campaign against the republicans in Africa? Or General Stilicho, leader of the Vandals, order the burning of the Sybillene prophecies in Rome? ~ Ross King

But it is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you ... it leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Love is impatient; love is cruel. It gets your hopes up then tears them down expecting you to be ok; able to cope without that second part of you that belongs to one unique person. ~ Alexandria Rhodes

They don't want the danger, and the darkness and loneliness," Alexandria interrupted softly. "They want the heat and the light, but they don't want radiation."

Roland closed his mouth and looked at Alexandria with indescribable pain and indescribable fondness.

"The stars have weight," Alexandria finished. "And my little life wasn't heavy enough to outweigh your want of it. ~ K. Ancrum

But God, the ruler of the universe, takes his stand upon it, regulating it and directing everything in a saving manner by the helm of his wisdom, using, in truth, neither hands nor feet, nor any other part whatever such as belongs to created objects. ~ Philo Of Alexandria

You know you're a history fan when you still get upset thinking about the library of Alexandria ~ Somewhere On The Internet

When I think of the library of Alexandria and of the fact that, although it burnt down, people continue to sort the letters of the alphabet according to that tradition, then that makes certain expressions of modernity, even of interventions on the textual level, possible. ~ Alexander Kluge

Cairo and Alexandria were cosmopolitan not so much because they contained foreigners, but because the Egyptian born in them is himself a stranger to his land. ~ Waguih Ghali

That's okay," Apollo replied, smiling at him in a wholly creepy' hide your kids' kind of way. "When you least expect it, I'm going to turn you into a a pink flower that smells like cat pee. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

For, in a word, if one thinks himself made beautiful by gold, he is inferior to gold; and he that is inferior to gold is not lord of it. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai. ~ David Ben-Gurion

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once ...

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human ~ James Joyce

Prayer that runs its course till the last day of life needs a strong and tranquil soul. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

There are only two rules. One is E. M. Forster's guide to Alexandria; the best way to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly. The second is from the Psalms; grin like a dog and run about through the city. ~ Jan Morris

Sometimes what-if fantasies are useful. Imagine that the entirety of Western civilisation's coding for computer systems or prints of all films ever made or all copies of Shakespeare and the Bible and the Qur'an were encrypted and held on one tablet device. And if that tablet was lost, stolen, burnt or corrupted, then our knowledge, use and understanding of that content, those words and ideas, would be gone for ever – only, perhaps, lingering in the minds of a very few men of memory whose job it had been to keep ideas alive. This little thought-experiment can help us to comprehend the totemic power of manuscripts. This is the great weight of responsibility for the past, the present and the future that the manuscripts of Constantinople carried. Much of our global cultural heritage – philosophies, dramas, epic poems – survive only because they were preserved in the city's libraries and scriptoria. Just as Alexandria and Pergamon too had amassed vast libraries, Constantinople understood that a physical accumulation of knowledge worked as a lode-stone – drawing in respect, talent and sheer awe. These texts contained both the possibilities and the fact of empire and had a quasi-magical status. This was a time when the written word was considered so potent – and so precious – that documents were thought to be objects with spiritual significance. (...)

It was in Constantinople that the book review was invented. Scholars seem to have had access to books within a proto-lendi ~ Bettany Hughes