Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 19

Logic has rid us of the absurdity of our clothes. That’s progress, no irony, only now we are cold. Hale and ill trade bodies with unusual willingness, while in midair souls tangle. The young start out disgusted and Poetry is left to the memo-writers.
Odysseus Elytis
Time is the moving image of eternity.
Plato
Just as we can’t fully explain what is beautiful, so we can’t fully explain why we are friends with someone in a way that will make the grounds of our attraction obvious to another — and even to ourselves. Our efforts always leave something out. And it is what is always left out that we try to gesture toward when we say that it is not something ABOUT our friends that we love but our friends THEMSELVES. But the self that we love is always just one one step behind whatever we can actually articulate. And so we are faced with a choice between saying something that seems informative but is never enough of an explanation ('loyal, practical, unworldly and so on') and saying something else that seems like an explanation but is completely uninformative ('the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality').
Alexander Nehamas
When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shrink from being seen to do it, even though the world should misunderstand it; for if you are not acting rightly, shun the action itself; if you are, why fear those who wrongly censure you?
Epictetus
Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire.
Plato
Shall not ILearn place and wisdom? Have I not learned this,Only so much to hate my enemy,As though he might again become my friend,And so much good to wish to do my friend,As knowing he may yet become my foe?
Sophocles
No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.
Homer
Old loves are dropped when new ones come
Euripides
...[R]eal wisdom is the property of God, and... human wisdom has little or no value.
Socrates
Luck is blind, they say. It can’t see where it’s going and keeps running into people…and the people it knocks into we call lucky! Well, to hell with luck if it's like that, I say!
Nikos Kazantzakis
The destiny of man is in his own soul.
Herodotus
To persevere trusting in what hopes he has is courage in a man. The coward despairs.
Euripides
If you try to cure evil with evilyou will add more pain to your fate.
Sophocles
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.
Plutarch
The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
Diogenes of Sinope
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.
Homer
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
Socrates
Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].
Plato
No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.
Plato
Then one day I found my head when I wasn't even trying.
Cat Stevens
From their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.
Plutarch
Everything is intimateNothing is personal
Natasha Tsakos
I will tell you why I became a philosopher. I became a philosopher because I wanted to be able to talk about many, many things, ideally with knowledge, but sometimes not quite the amount of knowledge that I would need if I were to be a specialist in them. It allows you to be many different things. And plurality and complexity are very, very important to me.
Alexander Nehamas
The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance.
Diogenes
There are three classes of men-lovers of wisdom lovers of honour lovers of gain.
Plato
But being overborne with numbers, and nobody daring to face about, stretching out his hands to heaven, [Romulus] prayed to Jupiter to stop the army, and not to neglect but maintain the Roman cause, now in extreme danger. The prayer was no sooner made, than shame and respect for their king checked many; the fears of the fugitives changed suddenly into confidence.
Plutarch
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato
...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.
Homer
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
Epictetus
I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once.
Euripides
...I do not think that it is right for a man to appeal to the jury or to get himself acquitted by doing so; he ought to inform them of the facts and convince them by argument. The jury does not sit to dispense justice as a favour, but to decide where justice lies; and the oath which they have sworn is not to show favour at their own discretion, but to return a just and lawful verdict... Therefore you must not expect me, gentlemen, to behave towards you in a way which I consider neither reputable nor moral nor consistent with my religious duty.
Socrates
The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.
Epicurus
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
Plato
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.
Homer
The angel of spring the mellow-throated nightingale.
Sappho
A lie never grows old.
Sophocles
He is not a lover who does not love forever.
Euripides
Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.
John Chrysostom
The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.
Plato
This is courage ... to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.
Euripides
If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.
Nikos Kazantzakis
All things flow nothing abides.
Heraclitus
Excessive fear is always powerless.
Aeschylus
CHORUS:You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
Sophocles
The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it hath bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt.
John Chrysostom
The Sun is bad enough even while he is single, drying up our marshes with his heat as he does. But what will become of us if he marries and and begets other suns?
Aesop
... man by nature is not a wild or unsocial creature, neither was he born so, but makes himself what he naturally is not, by vicious habit; and that again on the other side, he is civilized and grows gentle by a change of place, occupation, and manner of life, as beasts themselves that are wild by nature, become tame and tractable by housing and gentler usage...
Plutarch
In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not deadly.
Hippocrates
It is strange a difference comes from a subtraction.
Natasha Tsakos
It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard.
Aesop
If you formulate your question properly, mathematics gives you the answer
Savas Dimopoulos
When a man opens the car door for his wife it's either a new car or a new wife.
Prince Philip
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
Thucydides
]Sardisoften turning her thoughts here]you like a goddessand in your song most of all she rejoiced.But now she is conspicuous among Lydian womenas sometimes at sunsetthe rosyfingered moonsurpasses all the stars. And her lightstretches over salt seaequally and flowerdeep fields.And the beautiful dew is poured outand roses bloom and frailchervil and flowering sweetclover.But she goes back and forth rememberinggentle Atthis and in longingshe bites her tender mind
Sappho
People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe
Hippocrates
He said he'd hurt himself against a wall or had fallen down.But there was probably some other reason for the wounded, the bandaged shoulder.With a rather abrupt gesture, reaching for a shelf to bring down some photographs he wanted to look at, the bandage came came undone and a little blood ran.I did it up again, taking my time over the binding; he wasn't in pain and I liked looking at the blood. It was a thing of my love, that blood.When he left, I found, in front of his chair, a bloody rag, part of the dressing, a rag to be thrown straight into the garbage; and I put it to my lips and kept it there a long while- the blood of love against my lips.
Constantinos P. Cavafis
Ask the gods nothing excessive.
Aeschylus
How dangerous can false reasoning prove!
Sophocles
Un soir qu'ils étaient couchés l'un près de l'autre, comme elle lui demandait d'inventer un poème qui commencerait par je connais un beau pays, il s'exécuta sur-le-champ. Je connais un beau pays Il est de l'or et d'églantine Tout le monde s'y sourit Ah quelle aventure fine Les tigres y sont poltrons Les agneaux ont fière mine À tous les vieux vagabonds Ariane donne des tartines. Alors, elle lui baisa le la main, et il eut honte de cette admiration.
Albert Cohen
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
Diogenes of Sinope