Les temps primitifs sont lyriques, les temps antiques sont e¤  piques, les temps modernes sont dramatiques. The primitive era was lyrical, the classical era was epic and the modern era is dramatic.

-Hugo,Victor Marie
  Cromwell, pre¤  face.

Thislittlesteamer, likeall herbraveand battered sisters,is immortal. She'll go sailing proudly down the years in the epic of Dunkirk. And our great-great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.

-Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)
  Radio broadcast, 5 Jun, quoted in The Listener,13 Jun.

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.

-Tennyson
  The Princess, pt.2, l.352^7.