Renowned ancient simplicity, equilibrium and serenity were not the natural effortless virtues of a calm and balanced race; they were trying ordeals, the booty of fierce struggle; for centuries the dark, orgastic powers of earth grappled with the enlightened powers of man. And it happened - that is the Greek miracle - that for some years human reason triumphed over the chaos.
-- Nikos Kazantzakis, Journey to the Morea, p. 54

To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. The joy of life is written upon everything the Greeks left behind and they who leave it out of account fail to reckon with something that is of first importance in understanding how the Greek achievement came to pass in the world of antiquity.
-- Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

For one Greek Churchill there are a dozen Greek Lavals. Cowardice, self-interest, treacherous double-dealing and political in-fighting, between cities and factions within those cities, meet us at every turn. Hostile propaganda and the calculated smear-technique are commonplaces: not even Herodotus wholly avoids suspicion here. Even the most glorious and best known of actions often turn out, on close inspection, to have singularly mixed motives behind them. Yet nothing, in the last resort, can tarnish the splendour of that marvellous achievmeent, when, as Pindar (a Theban, not an Athenian) wrote, 'the sons of Athens laid a bright foundation-stone of freedom.'
-- Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars, p. 5

There was a general preference for aesthetic perfection rather than innovation -- a thought-provoking contrast with our own age.
--Jasper Griffin, in Boardman, Griffin & Murray, Greece and the Hellenistic World, p. 7