Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 18

Writing is my oxygen. Music is my carbon dioxide.
Jessica Bell
Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.
Euripides
Life is a perilous voyage.
Palladas
One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
Socrates
And time inherently creates a story. Things begin and they end. How they end is the story. Or maybe it's what happens between when they begin and end that's the story.
Arianna Huffington
People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.
Heraclitus
I do not know whether anyone has ever succeeded in not enjoying praise. And, if he enjoys it, he naturally wants to receive it. And if he wants to receive it, he cannot help but being distraught at losing it. Those who are in love with applause have their spirits starved not only when they are blamed off-hand, but even when they fail to be constantly praised.
John Chrysostom
I would prefer as a friend a good man who is ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.
Euripides
We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.
Diogenes
Anger exceeding limits causes fear and excessive kindness eliminates respect.
Euripides
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself — only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.
G.I. Gurdjieff
["F]or it's not possible," [Socrates] said, "for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound and trustworthy, and then a little later discovering that this person is wicked and untrustworthy - and then having this experience again with another. And whenever somebody experiences this many times, and especially at the hands of just those he might regard as his most intimate friends and comrades, he then ends up taking offense all the time and hates all human beings and believes there's nothing at all sound in anybody.
Plato
Which would you choose if you could:pleasure for yourself despite your friendsor a share in their grief?
Sophocles
...[Y]ou know very well the truth of what I [say]... I have incurred a great deal of bitter hostility; and this is what will bring about my destruction, if anything does... the slander and jealousy of a very large section of the people. They have been fatal to a great many other innocent men, and I suppose will continue to be so; there is no likelihood that they will stop at me. But perhaps someone will say 'Do you feel no compunction, Socrates, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death-penalty?' I might fairly reply to him 'You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one...['] The truth of the matter is this, gentlemen. Where a man has once taken up his stand, either because it seems best to him or in obedience to his orders, there I believe he is bound to remain and face the danger, taking no account of death or anything else before dishonour.
Socrates
Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum, we have bought a husband, we must then accept him as possessor of our body.
Euripides
Virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage.
Demosthenes
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
Socrates
My mother always said - "Never run after a man or a bus - there is always another one coming.
Tessa Kiros
People usually seek to join a religious system in order to gain the eternal bliss and freedom of the soul. But belonging somewhere; anywhere is not freedom. Free is the wind. You need to become the wind, not wanting to know how and why, but only to experience this quality of freedom that leads to the original “religion”. There the soul is finally ONE and aligned with anything.
Grigoris Deoudis
Rather I think that a man who ... is willing ... to value learning as long as he lives, not supposing that old age brings him wisdom of itself, will necessarily pay more attention to the rest of his life.
Plato
Whatever fate ordains, danger or hurt, or death predetermined, nothing can avert.
Theognis
This is the worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.
Herodotus
So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls "a feeble fighter".
Plato
The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability.
Herodotus
Love is a serious mental disease.
Plato
When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.
Maria Callas
When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.
Euripides
Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far.
Euripides
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
Plato
Prayer should be the means by which I at all times receive all that I need and for this reason be my daily refuge my daily consolation my daily joy my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
Saint John Chrysostom
Creativity is the DNA of innovation, the virus of evolution, the antidote to automation
Natasha Tsakos
You are wrong sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong.
Socrates
Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this.
John Chrysostom
Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.
Epicurus
What if Theater was the Pong of the the digital Ping?A place where the live experience has an function?
Natasha Tsakos
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.
Euripides
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance
Plato
For it is not needful, to use a common proverb, that one should drink up the ocean who wishes to learn that its water is salt.
Irenaeus of Lyons
Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts.
Plato
If we were fossils of two snails caught in a rock for millions of years.Would we know we were together?
Natasha Tsakos
The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.
Plutarch
He needs little who desires but little.
Cleanthes
Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.
Epictetus
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
Plato
The splendor of youth is, to a point, the splendor of error. Jealous the old, who have everything previewed! The nightingale will never come sing over your wisdom. It won’t, darlin’, it won’t.
Odysseus Elytis
Wise men speak because they have something to say: Fools because they have to say something
Plato
As for me all I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates
In peace sons bury their fathers in war fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus
The tongue of man is a twisty thing.
Homer
If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.
Epictetus
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
Plato
When people lack true culture or are devoid of innovative ideas, they speak about wine, various brands of alcoholic beverages, or the quality of soap.
Dimitris Mita
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.
Epictetus
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
Socrates
Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting with the gift of speech
Simonides
Our vocabulary may become a real time algorithmic word bank. Could you imagine having a conversation like that? Where the meaning of words constantly adapts?
Natasha Tsakos
The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Seize the hour.
Sophocles
...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...
Plato