PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work: the ancients painted their statues. The only present alliance between the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons. - Ambrose Bierce
But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. - Vladimir Nabokov
Eldest taught me about ancient religions that worshiped the sun. I never understood why- it's just a ball of light and heat. But if the sun of Sol-Earth swirls in colors and lights like that girl's hair, well, I can see why the ancients would worship that. - Beth Revis
It seems to me that psychology is only another word for what the ancients called fate. - Donna Tartt
BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. Is public worship, then, a sin, That for devotions paid to Bacchus The lictors dare to run us in, And resolutely thump and whack us? Jorace - Ambrose Bierce
ELYSIUM, n. An imaginary delightful country which the ancients foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth by the early Christians -- may their souls be happy in Heaven! - Ambrose Bierce
HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads. - Ambrose Bierce