Time & Perspective Quote by Heinrich Schliemann

A conversion narrative disguised as a study plan: Schliemann frames Greek not as a subject but as a calling. The sentence is built like testimony, with “From that moment” marking an origin myth and “did not cease” turning effort into devotion. He doesn’t merely want to learn Greek; he wants permission. That small word slips a whole worldview into place: knowledge is a gate kept by God, and the learner’s job is to prove worthy through persistence.

The context matters because Schliemann’s life was a long argument against the idea that scholarship belongs only to the credentialed. Born poor, largely self-taught, he later bankrolled his way into archaeology and chased Homer with a zeal that looked, to critics, like showmanship. This line reads like an early rehearsal of the persona he would perfect: the pious autodidact, driven by destiny, answering a private summons history will later ratify.

The subtext is ambition made morally legible. By translating desire into prayer, Schliemann launders the hunger for status and access through humility. It’s rhetorically canny: spiritual language shields him from the charge of mere climbing while also elevating his project beyond hobbyism. Greek becomes a sacrament, not just a tool, and that helps explain both his astonishing discipline and his later willingness to bend institutions (and sometimes evidence) toward the story he wanted to live.

Even the passive construction “it might… be permitted to me” performs patience while quietly insisting on inevitability. If God grants it, who can deny it?