Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the destructive power of war and belief systems compared to natural disasters like Mount Vesuvius.
In this quote, Stephen Greenblatt reflects on the impact of human conflict and ideology on the preservation of history and culture, suggesting that wars and fervent faith have caused more irrevocable damage to antiquity than even the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It underscores the idea that while nature can be catastrophic, human actions often carry a more profound and lasting effect on heritage and civilization.
In practice
In a lecture on the impact of warfare on history, one might quote Greenblatt to provoke thought about human conflict.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.
What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.
The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
When I see the Confederate flag, I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don't understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.
Words were useless. At times, they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for them? The heart is as silent as a fish, however much the tongue tries to give it a voice.
The universe... is a machine for the making of gods.
Calumny is only the noise of madmen.
Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them.
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