“The city-state was the means by which the Greek consciously strove to make the life both of the community and of the individual more excellent than it was before.”

“It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians, and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved--that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty.”

“Typical of the limitations, even the contradictions of life, is the fact that what is most worth having can often only be had at the peril of life itself.”

“...unless our standards of civilization are comfort and contraptions, Athens from (say) 480 to 380 was clearly the most civilized society that has yet existed.”

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or twohundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to existanywhere in the United States of America.”

“Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”

“In the life of the individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one.”