I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry.
We must teach our people the greatness of China's historical culture. In our educational program we must stress Chinese history and geography so that all may know and appreciate China's civilization of five thousand years and the far-flung boundaries of our ancient race. This will engender a greater faith in our own future.
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
Elephants are not human, of course. They are something much more ancient and primordial, living on a different plane of existence. Long before we arrived on the scene, they worked out a way of being in the world that has not fundamentally changed and is sustainable, and not predatory or destructive.
There are certain things in ancient practices that are not worth adhering to.
It's no secret that I've always had an interest in mythology. Whether it's Arthurian or ancient Greek or even Marvel universe. I've always connected with it on some level.
We all belong to an ancient identity. Stories are the rivers that take us there.
Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making.
In the imperfect records left of the anatomy of the ancient Egyptians, no trace of any knowledge of the spleen can be ascertained.
On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.
The world may be driven by the same ancient impulses. We will continue to see human struggles and successes. We will witness human glory and tragedies.
There hasn't been a day in my life since I started Latin in ninth grade that I haven't benefited by the lives of the ancients.
In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.
The ancient Jewish people gave the world the vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and learning of war.
The common ancient ancestor of mulluses and chordates could not possibly have possessed a camera eye, so quite clearly they have evolved independently. The solution has been arrived at by completely different routes.
I was 16 before I met another passionate collector. One summer, I visited England; a new friend took me calling on his dotty, brilliant old aunt. She occupied a quaint house in Kent. Its walls were lined with glass-fronted cases full of what? Ancient shoe buckles.
It more or less has the shape of a love song, but 'Crescent Moon' reflects more my longing for an ancient romantic context that includes wild animals, fire, danger of death, stellar navigation, and seasonal intuition.
When I was four years old, my father, who was a colonel in the army, was stationed in Salzburg, Austria. Across the street from our house was an ancient castle on a cliff. So when I first heard fairy tales, I felt as if the magic of 'Cinderella' or 'Sleeping Beauty' was taking place right in my own neighborhood.
I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief.
We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe.
