The phrase "ancient dictum" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a long-standing principle or statement that has been accepted over time, often in a philosophical or moral context.
Example: "The ancient dictum that 'knowledge is power' continues to resonate in today's society."
Alternatives: "timeless saying" or "age-old principle".
They say they overlook the Torah's prohibition against homosexual sex as an ancient dictum that has lost its moral force.
Most Westerners probably assume that this is an ancient dictum -- and I bet the man who wrote it did, too.
The differences that persist throughout the world despite its globalization affirm an ancient dictum of economics that things are driven by what happens at the margin, not at the core.
Before we have more confidence that we can do good for people suffering from Parkinson's disease and other degenerative conditions, we must rely on an ancient dictum of the physician: First, do no harm.
A good place to start is a hand-scrawled inscription I saw on a crumbling wall in a border town in northern Pakistan that read, "Jihad of the sword, like prayer, is a religious obligation". Most Westerners probably assume that this is an ancient dictum -- and I bet the man who wrote it did, too.
"'Do no harm' is the ancient dictum that physicians are expected to abide by," says Henry Wilde, a doctor on the faculty of medicine at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, who unsuccessfully tried the protocol with his colleagues on a dog-bite victim.
Not only Christians but Islamists and Jews, too, are reaching for the certainties of ancient dictums and beliefs.
Sir Cristopher Lee belonged in a very rare and admirable breed of British people, tending to go extinct, which combined intellect with action, quest with adventure, artistry with courage and bravery, embodying in an identical way the ancient-Greek dictum: 'healthy mind in a healthy body'.
Losey drew inspiration from a kind of glossy love story that here recalls a pre-Hollywood romanticism — the one that arose from post-Enlightenment German philosophy, as in Friedrich Schlegel's great dictum: "Many works of the ancients have become fragments.
(When Ezra Pound first wrote his famous dictum "make it new," he was citing a proverb inscribed on the bathtub of an ancient Chinese emperor).
His dictum was: "Everybody is talented".
