Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 14

As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.
Hippocrates
Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.
Plato
Some people are wonderful, some wonderless.
Natasha Tsakos
Impossible is only two letters away from being Possible.
Natasha Tsakos
To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away
Sophocles
Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.
Homer
God has entrusted me with myself.
Epictetus
Wisdom is knowing you know nothing
Socrates
As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person].
John Chrysostom
Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety.
Aesop
The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.
Sophocles
Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.And the greatest praise to India is this: not only are her people beautiful; not only are her daily life and cult beautiful; but, in the midst of the utilitarian, humanitarian, dogmatic world of the present day, she keeps on proclaiming the outstanding value of Beauty for the sake of Beauty, through her very conception of Godhead, of religion and of life.
Savitri Devi
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
Epictetus
You can't go home again. Your childhood is lost. The friends of your youth are gone. Your present is slipping away from you. Nothing is ever the same.
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Give me one manfrom among ten thousandif he is the best
Heraclitus
Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.
Plato
If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.
Epicurus
It is more disgraceful for a king to tell lies than anyone else.
Arrian
He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
Epicurus
He who least needs tomorrow, will most gladly greet tomorrow.
Epicurus
It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
Epictetus
Time brings all things to pass.
Aeschylus
The man who melts With social sympathy though not allied Is of more worth than a thousand kinsmen.
Euripides
Character is long-standing habit.
Plutarch
Men perish because they cannot join the beginning with the end.
Alcmaeon
... toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivated delusions in search of theoretical justification; fundamentalist tracts that acknowledged facts only when they could be accommodated to the demands of the lucrative faith. Despite their highly impressive labels and technical appearance, economic models were merely mathematized versions of the touching superstition that markets know best, both at times of tranquility and in periods of tumult.
Yanis Varoufakis
When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’.
Epictetus
A wise fellow who is also worthless always charms the rabble.
Euripides
[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.
Homer
Too many kings can ruin an army
Homer
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
Socrates
Steer your boat with justice: forge A tongue on truth's anvil.
Pindar
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
Heraclitus
All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.
Sophocles
Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity not a threat.
Prince Phillip of England
O what will she do, a soul bitten into with wrong?
Euripides
We are always going somewhereelse
Natasha Tsakos
Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.
G.I. Gurdjieff
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood.
Plutarch
Haemon: No city is property of a single man.Creon: But custom gives possession to the ruler.Haemon: You'd rule a desert beautifully alone.
Sophocles
I have seen or heard of no other man whom destiny treated with such enmity as it did Philoktetes
Sophocles
The sun is new each day.
Heraclitus
Why should a man fear since chance is all in all for him and he can clearly fore-know nothing? Best to live lightly as one can unthinking.
Sophocles
Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.
Nikos Kazantzakis
We follow the ways of wolves, the habits of tigers: or, rather we are worse than they. To them nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, while God has honoured us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we are become worse than the wild beast.
John Chrysostom
I swooned again – I had that moment of falling in love with reading again.
Christos Tsiolkas
It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded but the fear of pain or death.
Epictetus
…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.
Homer
He is not only idle who does nothing but he is idle who might be better employed.
Socrates
Time is a kindly god.
Sophocles
By helping us keep the world in perspective, sleep gives us a chance to refocus on the essence of who we are. And in that place of connection, it is easier for the fears and concerns of the world to drop away.
Arianna Huffington
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others.
Plutarch
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
Herodotus
Creatures of a day, what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light and, aye, a gentle life.
Pindar
The glory of God is in man fully alive.
St. Irenaeus
Let him who would move the world first move himself.
Socrates
When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;invisible hands draw back the curtains,a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dustof the piano...
Yiannis Ritsos
The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.
Epicurus
let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
Plato
No matter how entertaining, diverse, concise, or detailed, a writing craft book is, it’s not going to work magic on you, it’s not going to suddenly make you a brilliant writer simply by reading it. You need to use what you read and learn in your own writing. Because that’s when you have those AHA moments. That's when it really sticks.
Jessica Bell