1830s
Variant: Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon
Source: Reply to a taunt by Daniel O'Connell http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/dizzy.html
Source: Early appearance in The Russian Mephistopheles, Hunterberg, Max, 105-106, 1909, Glasgow, John J. Rae https://archive.org/details/russianmephistop00huntiala/page/106/mode/2up,
“No honour was left for the gods, when Augustus chose to be himself worshipped with temples and statues, like those of the deities, and with flamens and priests.”
Book I, 10; Church-Brodribb translation
Annals (117)
Original
Nihil deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet.
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Tacitus 42
Roman senator and historian 54–120Related quotes
Pan-Worship
Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908)
Context: O evanescent temples built of man
To deities he honoured and dethroned!
Earth shoots a trail of her eternal vine
To crown the head that men have ceased to honour.
Beneath the coronal of leaf and lichen
The mocking smile upon the lips derides
Pan's lost dominion; but the pointed ears
Are keen and prick'd with old remember'd sounds.
All my breast aches with longing for the past!
Thou God of stone, I have a craving in me
For knowledge of thee as thou wert in old
Enchanted twilights in Arcadia.
“Whoever worships the gods in good faith, loves their priests too.”
Qui bona fide deos colit amat et sacerdotes.
Preface, line 10
Silvae, Book V
"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism
"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Florilegium
What Is Reality?
Context: Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably exist, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love's name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred?
Ionic http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=76&cat=1.
Variant translation: Because we have broken up their images,
because we have expelled them from their fanes,
in no wise are they dead for that — the gods.
Land of Ionia, it is you they love
still — you whose memories still delight their souls.
Poems by C. P. Cavafy as translated by John Cavafy (2003) http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=205&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)
Context: That we’ve broken their statues,
that we’ve driven them out of their temples,
doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead.
O land of Ionia, they’re still in love with you,
their souls still keep your memory.
In 1971, when the privy purse was abolished to the royal families, in "Royal vignettes: Travancore - Simplicity graces this House (30 March 2003)"
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 617.