As the ancients wisely say
Have a care o' the main chance,
And look before you ere you leap;
For as you sow you are like to reap. [ Butler ]

The ancients dreaded death: the Christian can only fear dying. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

We derive all that is pardonable in us from ancient fountains. [ Dryden ]

They left a great deal for the industry and sagacity of after ages. [ Locke ]

Those that too much reverence the ancients, are a scorn to the moderns. [ Proverb ]

The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections. [ Addison ]

The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis. [ Glanvill ]

The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest. [ Franklin ]

The ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans) are the only ancients that never grow old. [ C. J. Weber ]

If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

I have found the saying of the ancients true, that better is a bright comrade on a weary road than a horse-litter. [ Charles Reade ]

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns. [ William Penn ]

Those whom we call the ancients were in truth novices in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind. [ Prescott ]

We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The diamond has been always esteemed the rarest stone, and the most precious of all; among the ancients it was called the stone of reconciliation. [ Lewis Vertoman ]

By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now. [ J. C. Hare ]

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. [ Macaulay ]

Various and very absurd notions prevailed among the ancients in regard to the dew; by some it was supposed to descend from the stars, and to be possessed of wonderful virtues. [ Barnard ]

The poetry of the ancients was that of possession, ours is that of aspiration; the former stands fast on the soil of the present, the latter hovers between memory and anticipation. [ Schlegel ]

There are strange coincidences in life: they occur so a propos that the strongest minds are impressed, and ask if that mysterious and inexorable fatality in which the ancients believed, is not really the law that governs the world. [ Alfred Mercier ]

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition. But in this respect every author is a Spartan, being more ashamed of the discovery than of the depredation. [ Colton ]

This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity. [ Goldsmith ]