Although Damascus is considered the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near it.


Mitt Romney's energy policy is a relic of the 19th century. We need a 21st century plan. The fate of the planet is at stake.

Anybody great, we're all interested in the relics. If you found an unfinished Gauguin, you'd still want to see it.

What makes 'American Pie' so unusual is that it isn't a relic from the counterculture but a talisman, which, like a sacred river, keeps bringing joy to listeners everywhere. When 'American Pie' suddenly is played on a jukebox or radio, it's almost impossible not to sing along.

Most ecclesiastical relics are fixed in time at the moment of their manufacture. That is why they are offered for veneration in casings that resemble pocket watches. They have lost their claim to mystery because they are so clearly the products of time.

Starting in the early 1800s, Southerners in the United States began to defend slavery as their 'peculiar institution,' and northerners didn't mind, since the phrase suggested that chattel bondage was quarantined from the rest of the nation: that it was, or soon would be, a relic of its past and would not define its future.