The worldview that underlay the New Testament was so different from that of the Greeks and the Romans as to be almost its opposite. It was a worldvie… - Thomas Cahill

Human beings never know more than a part, as "through a glass darkly"; and all knowledge comes to us in pieces.

If we could save one word from Greek civilization, it would have to be aretē, excellence. The aristocrats gave themselves their name, the aristoi (the best). It is an open question whether anyone considered himself a member of the kakoi (the worst, the craven, the dumb shits). though this put-down prances everywhere in the surviving literature. ...that shame—the paralyzing fear of being numbered among the kakoi—is the hidden engine that ran Greek life.

Of the many people's of the earth, the Romans may have had the most boring religion of all. ...basically a businessman's religion of contractual obligations.