Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The text praises being Hellenic as the most valuable human quality, placing all else in the realm of the divine.
In plain terms
Being Greek is the best quality people can have; everything else belongs to gods.
What can you take from it?
Human excellence is found in cultural identity and spirit.

Where it applies

  • discussing heritage
  • praising a virtue
  • academic study

Putting it to work

  • education
  • cultural preservation
  • identity building

Questions to consider

  • What defines your cultural excellence?
  • What qualities do you value above all?

Another view

It elevates one culture above all others which can be exclusionary.

More from Constantine P. Cavafy

  1. Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds you lay on, but also those desires glowing openly in eyes that looked at you, trembling for …

    Permalink to quote #7
  2. I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details. And, for me, the whole of you has been transformed into feeling.

    Permalink to quote #9
  3. When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, wish always that your course be long, full of adventure, full of lore.

    Permalink to quote #6

Related quotes

  1. Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

    Anna Letitia BarbauldAnna Letitia Barbauld quote #5
  2. In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civiliz…

    Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #26
  3. It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, bla…

    Nikos KazantzakisNikos Kazantzakis quote #46