Crete Quotes

I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer. ~ Woody Allen

On a summers night, I have sat on the balcony drinking Ouzo, watching the ghosts of Greek Heroes sailing past, listening to the rustle of their sail cloths and the gentle lapping of their oars...and lain alongside Pythagoras watching him study the myriad of triangles in the constellations twinkling above us.

Whether it was Crete, the heat, the Ouzo, or a combination, it is unequalled anywhere other than Santorini, in my humble opinion. ~ Phil Simpkin

I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor, and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete, the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him, all doors and all hearts are opened. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

If the novelist loses touch with this linguistic ground of prose style, if he is unable to attain the heights of a relativized, Galilean linguistic consciousness, if he is deaf to organic double-voicedness and to the internal dialogization of living and evolving discourse, then he will never comprehend, or even realize, the actual possibilities and tasks of the novel as a genre. He may, of course, crete an artistic work that compositionally and thematically will be similar to a novel, will be "made" exactly as a novel is made, but he will not thereby have created a novel. The style will always give him away. We will recognize the naively self-confident or obtusely stubborn unity of a smooth, pure single-voiced language (perhaps accompanied by a primitive, artificial, worked-up double-voicedness). We quickly sense that such an author finds it easy to purge his work of speech diversity: he simply does not listen to the fundamental heteroglossia inherent in actual language; he mistakes social overtones, which create the timbres of words, for irritating noises that it is his task to eliminate. The novel, when torn out of authentic linguistic speech diversity, emerges in most cases as a "closet drama," with detailed, fully developed and "artistically worked out" stage directions (it is, of course, bad drama). In such a novel, divested of its language diversity, authorial language inevitably ends up in the awkward and absurd position of the language of stage directions in plays [32 ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

Surely in much talk there cannot choose but be much vanity. Loquacity is the fistula of the mind,
ever-running and almost incurable, let every man, therefore, be a Phocion or Pythagorean, to speak briefly to the point or not at all; let him labor like them of Crete, to show more wit in his discourse than words, and not to pour out of his mouth a flood of the one, when he can hardly wring out of his brains a drop of the other. ~ Herbert Spencer

All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted.
This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well. ~ Lewis Hyde

In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making. ~ Carol P. Christ

Crete was heavily fortified, but Nicephorus brushed aside the waiting Arab army by sending in his marines - terrifying Norse warriors whose terrible double-bladed axes could smash through armor and bone alike. ~ Lars Brownworth

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Ah, I found you." Came a voice behind me. My heart skipped a beat as a smile spread across my face. How do I already know his voice?
'My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of thy tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.' I remembered the line from Romeo and Juliet. I could not forget Ariston's voice if I tried. At the sound, all thoughts of the odd occurrence faded.
I turned around to see Ariston Crete walking towards me. I realized when I saw him that there was a part of my mind that had wondered if he was real, if I had not only imagined his beauty, but clearly I had not. Somehow, he is real, right down to his ancient eyes. It felt just as indescribable to look into his eyes as it had before. ~ Jasmine Dubroff

The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The lintel of more than one collapsed Venetian house on Crete bears the Latin motto 'The world is nothing but smoke and shadows'. ~ Roger Crpwley

My favourite place to write is at my desk in my house in the mountains of Crete. I produce more there because one big distraction is missing: the Internet. ~ Neal Asher

Venice manipulated markets by controlling production. In the late thirteenth century, wishing to raise the world market price, Venice had all saltworks in Crete destroyed and banned the local production of salt. ~ Mark Kurlansky

We are entrusted, you must know, with the revision of the English Dictionary. On the evidence of the Liverpool find of Christmas cards, in which occurred such couplets as:

Just to hope the day keeps fine
For you and your this Christmas time,

and:

I hope this stocking's in your line
When stars shine bright at Christmas-time

I hold that "Christmas-time" was often pronounced "Christmas-tine", and that this is a dialect variant of the older "Christmas-tide". Quant denies this, with a warmth that is unusual in him.'
'Quant is right. ~ Robert Graves

in 1944 the Germans executed brutal, slaughtering attacks on the people of mountain Crete. ~ Adam Nicolson

So, you invite a wild rabbit living in Italy to a party on the island of Crete. What's it supposed to do, swim there? Its little tux would get wet. ~ Rick Riordan

In time of war, under the banner of an enemy recognisable as such, a foreigner from a camp outside the lines, the imperial idea grew strong in confidence and temper. The British democracy rallied to the call of a strong leadership, and it was not just in rhetorical enthusiasm but with considerable personal satisfaction that Churchill hailed the year 1940-1 as the British people's 'finest hour'. He, with other imperialists, was delighted by the fact that, when it came to the sticking-place, it was the old-fashioned loyalty of the reactionary British Empire to all that was symbolised by allegiance to Crown and country that came forward to save European civilisation from utter overthrow by German tyranny...The days of showing the flag - even for only a momentary glimpse, such as wall that inhabitants of Greece and Crete and Dieppe had of it - had returned. The Empire was the Empire once more, and to 10, Downing Street returned that imperial control that two generations of Dominion opinion had combined to condemn as sinister. ~ A.P. Thornton

Arise my soul, and review your deeds which have preceeded from you. Scrutinize them closely, and shed the rain of your tears, declaring openly to Christ your thoughts and deeds, so that you may be justified. ~ Andrew Of Crete

A gentle joyousness-a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. ~ Herman Melville

The gallant captain vacated his cabin for her, and Manna changed her role from cook to chaperone. All most correct. But it was hardly the done thing to cadge a lift on a torpedo boat. Yet she did it twice in a lifetime. ~ Mary Allsebrook

Theseus Within the Labyrinth pt.1

The lives of Greeks in the old days were deep,
mysterious and often lead to questions like
just what was wrong with Ariadne anyway, that's
what I'd like to know? She would have done
anything for that rascally Theseus, and what
did he do but sneak out in the night and row
back to his ship with black sails. Let's get
the heck out of here, he muttered to his crew
and they leaned on their oars as he went whack-
whack on the whacking board - a human metronome
of adventure and ill-fortune. She was King Minos's
daughter and had helped Theseus kill the king's
pet monster, her half-brother, so possibly
he didn't like feeling beholden - people might
think he wasn't tough. But certainly he'd spent
his life knocking chips off shoulders and flattening
any fellow reckless enough to step across a line
drawn in the dust. If you wanted a punch thrown,
Theseus was just the cowboy to throw it. I'm only
happy when hitting and scratching, he'd told Ariadne
that first night. So he'd been the logical choice
to sail down from Athens to Crete to stop this
nonsense of a tribute of virgins for some
monster to eat. Those Cretans called it eating but
Theseus thought himself no fool and liked a virgin
as well as the next man. Not that he could have got
into the Labyrinth without Ariadne's help or out
either for that matter. As f ~ Stephen Dobyns

Anti-sabbatical: A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing computer knit sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intentions ~ Douglas Coupland

Biffi said it was more American on an air force base in Crete than it was in Times Square. ~ Cathleen Schine

We have here another interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early Minoan Crete. ~ Leonard W. King

After immortal feats-of-arms at Narvik, in Holland, at Eben Emael, at Korinth, on Crete and at Leningrad, these men held the encircled airfield at Anissowo-Gorodischtsche in bitter close combat against Soviet divisions. ~ Frank Kurowski

There us a kind of flame in Crete - let us call it "soul" - something more powerful than either life or death. There is pride, obstinacy, valor, and together with these something else inexpressible and imponderable, something which makes you rejoice that you are a human being, and at the same time tremble. (Report to Greco) ~ N. Kazantzakis

The carved images on the early Minoan sealstones are tantalising, inscrutable. The Nature Goddess is yanked from the soil like a snake or a sheaf of barley; the Mistress of the Animals suckles goats and gazelles. There are male Adorants certainly - up on tiptoe, their outstretched arms hoisted in a kind of heil, their bodies arched suggestively, pelvis forward, before the Goddess - but there are no masculine deities, not a single one in sight. No woman worth her salt, one might think, could fail to be intrigued. ~ Alison Fell

The last western society to worship female powers was Minoan Crete. And significantly, that fell and did not rise again. ~ Camille Paglia

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally. ~ Saki

A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

This is a moment: ~ Thomas Wolfe

One cannot analyse the character of European gardens without looking beyond the Mediterranean. This is because horticulture, palace life and city-building developed in the Fertile Crescent before spreading, via Crete, Greece, Egypt and Italy to the forests of Europe ~ Tom Turner

She turns the speedometer off. Running totally black now. Precipitating her way toward the sweet 'crete of the creek bottom like a black angel who has just had the shroud lines of her celestial parachute severed by the Almighty. And when the wheels finally meet the pavement, it just about drives her knees up through her jawbone. She finishes the whole gravitational transaction with not much altitude and a nasty head of dark velocity. ~ Neal Stephenson

Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain. ~ William James

In college, I was a researcher/writer for 'Let's Go: Europe,' assigned to Crete and Cyprus. I was supposed to go to England, but at the last minute they transferred me, despite the fact that I spoke not a word of Greek. I learned the very basics, and to this day can say 'oil,' 'vinegar,' and 'boyfriend in America.' ~ Julia Quinn