“'History repeats itself' and this saying has become a truism. Nevertheless, the study of the past is relegated to the scholar and the school boy—a testimony to human stupidity. We are like youth that can never learn from age. [History] is a really a chart for our guidance... where we now are going astray and losing ourselves, other men once did the same, and they left a record of the blind alleys they went down.”

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“Cicero was one of the two greatest orators of antiquity and few writings have had as many and as devoted readers. For centuries, he was the main channel by which Greek standards reached mankind. Today—after 2000+ years—there are speeches of his which still live.”

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“Euripides saw war as completely evil and he wrote the greatest anti-war piece of literature there is, the Trojan Women, but from first to last, he never mounts the pulpit.”

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“Horace is the complete man of the world, with tolerance for all and partisanship for none. A Benjamin Franklin turned poet, a poetical Montaigne, a poet whose distinguishing characteristic is common sense with that most delightful gift of enjoying keenly all life's simplest pleasures... Who would not like to see Horace walk in through his door any day in the year? Immediately everything would seem more agreeable”

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“In Seneca's letters, in the discourses of Epictetus, in Marcus Aurelius' diary, there is an atmosphere of purity, goodness, noble strength, such as pervades few books in all the literature of the world.”

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“The comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique... Popular comedy reflects the average person.”

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“The final reason for Rome's defeat was the failure of mind and spirit to rise to a new and great opportunity. They were split into the sharpest oppositions, extremes, a narrow selfishness that kept men blind when their own self-preservation demanded a world-wide outlook. Material development outstripped human development; the Dark Ages took possession of Europe, classical antiquity ended.”

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“When not directly under Greek guidance, the Roman did not perceive beauty in every-day matters, or indeed care to do so. Beauty was unimportant to him. Life in his eyes was a very serious and a very arduous business, and he had no time for what he would have thought of as a mere decoration of it.”

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