“We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge.”

—  Simonides of Ceos

From the Cenotaph at the Isthmos

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge." by Simonides of Ceos?
Simonides of Ceos photo
Simonides of Ceos 6
Ancient Greek musician and poet -556–-468 BC

Related quotes

Samuel Butler photo

“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book X

Homér photo

“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”

Homér Iliad

X. 173–174 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

H.L. Mencken photo

“But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...

Bob Dylan photo

“Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Shelter from the Storm

Margaret Atwood photo

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Milan Kundera photo

“It was the call of all those fortuities… which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 51
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body

Roberto Bolaño photo

“I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.”

Roberto Bolaño book Amulet

Source: Amulet

Jacques Ellul photo

“…because of the myth of progress, it is much easier to sell a man an electric razor than a straight-edged one.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 41
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)

Pierre Sonnerat photo

“We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote antiquity .... We know that all peoples came there to draw the elements of their knowledge ... India, in her splendor, gave religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed to her both their fables and their wisdom.”

Pierre Sonnerat (1748–1814) French botanist (1748-1814)

Pierre Sonnerat: Voyage aux Indes orientales et a la Chine, Paris, 1782. Quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Other Scholars, by Stephen Knapp https://www.stephen-knapp.com/a_look_at_india_from_the_views_of_other_scholars.htm
Source: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Tribute_to_Hinduism.html?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ

Related topics