84 Quotes by Bettany Hughes

A potent idea, given a name and a face across five millennia, this deity is the incarnation of fear as well as love, of pain as well as pleasure, of the agony and ecstasy of desire

…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.

Rivayete göre şeytan, Mesih İsa'ya Asya yakasındaki Çamlıca tepelerinden, "dünyanın ve içindeki krallıkların bütün ihtişamı budur" derken Boğaz'ı, Haliç'i ve Bizans akropolisini göstermiştir. Burası kusursuz ve bu yüzden sürekli yeni baştan hayat bulan, baştan çıkarıcı şey olarak tasvir edilecek bir yerdi.

For the Spartans, it wasn’t walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city; it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart. And it existed in its purest form in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on their way to war!

Peter Jones’s is a vital public service. He reminds us that while we shouldn’t live in the past, we are wiser and stronger when we live with it.

So at that time of day when the early sun still rings haloes on human heads, Socrates is walking through the Agora to his judgement day.

The occasional motivational speech gig tends to pay better than the books and television.

My best writing day starts with coffee from our local Cypriot cafe and a newspaper from the Tamil corner shop - they always ask what I'm up to, and why I haven't brushed my hair - then a short, sharp walk. I think as I go.

My guilty pleasure at the end of the day is an old thesaurus. I know that can lead to overwriting, but if words such as lambent, pyretic and boscy exist, how sad they should stay recondite.