Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 21

May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene, Antigone (The Theban Plays) by Sophocles
Sophocles
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire emotion and knowledge.
Plato
There is an art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife
Hippocratic OAth
Nothing forces us to knowWhat we do not want to knowExcept pain
Aeschylus
No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.
John Chrysostom
To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.
Giorgio de Chirico
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
Plato
She felt her in her heart all the time now, yearning for her lost love and lamenting for past mistakes. The Lady’s grief was overwhelming sometimes, making Sofia sad for no reason at all, especially at night when the world around her grew quiet and there were no distractions.
Effrosyni Moschoudi
By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning.
Nikos Kazantzakis
When a man's willing and eager God joins in.
Aeschylus
So long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist
Epicurus
Who dares think one thing and another tell My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
Homer
But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.
Nikos Kazantzakis
When you are wronged and your heart and feelings are hardened, do not be distressed, for this has happened providentially; but be glad and reject the thoughts that arise within you, knowing that if they are destroyed at the stage when they are only provocations, their evil consequences will be cut off, whereas if the thoughts persist the evil may be expected to develop.
St. Mark the Ascetic
He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
Epictetus
If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
Socrates
I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.
Nikos Kazantzakis
There is satiety in all things in sleep and love-making in the loveliness of singing and the innocent dance.
Homer
Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Socrates
...[T]he really important thing is not to live, but to live well... [a]nd to live well means the same thing as to live honourably or rightly...
Socrates
With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.
Nikos Kazantzakis
The Persians are very fond of wine ... It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk and then in the morning when they are sober the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made and if it is then approved they act on it if not they set it aside. Sometimes however they are sober at their first deliberations but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.
Herodotus
To an old father, nothing is more sweet than a daughter. Boys are more spirited, but their ways are not so tender.
Euripides
No great thing is created suddenly.
Epictetus
Two friends-two bodies with one soul inspired.
Homer
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone the mind those of the past and future as well.
Epicurus
The god abandons AntonyWhen at the hour of midnight an invisible choir is suddenly heard passingwith exquisite music, with voices ― Do not lament your fortune that at last subsides, your life’s work that has failed, your schemes that have proved illusions. But like a man prepared, like a brave man, bid farewell to her, to Alexandria who is departing. Above all, do not delude yourself, do not say that it is a dream, that your ear was mistaken. Do not condescend to such empty hopes. Like a man for long prepared, like a brave man, like the man who was worthy of such a city, go to the window firmly, and listen with emotion but not with the prayers and complaints of the coward (Ah! supreme rapture!) listen to the notes, to the exquisite instruments of the mystic choir,and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria whom you are losing.
Constantinos P. Cavafis
When one with honeyed words but evil mindPersuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
Euripides
or else I would have sung a songin response to what the male sex sings.For our lengthy past has much to sayabout men's lives as well as ours
Euripides
...[T]he right way is to give one's attention first to the highest good of the young, just as you expect a good gardener to give his attention first to the young plants, and after that to the others. - Socrates
Plato
Common aim is stronger than blood.
G.I. Gurdjieff
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato
Since luck's a nine days' wonder wait their end.
Euripides
There is a mortal breed most full of futility. In contempt of what is at hand they strain into the future hunting impossibilities on the wings of ineffectual hopes.
Pindar
Evil gains work their punishment.
Sophocles
What is the purpose? Do no ask. No one knows, not even God, as He advances along with us, He too, searching and being exposed to danger; He too is given a struggle. Hunger and injustice exist in the heart, as does abundance of darkness. The things you see are not specters; no matter how much blow, they will not be dispelled. They are flesh and bone. Touch them; they exist. Don't you hear a cry in the air? They are crying. What are they crying? Help! To whom they are crying? You! You: every man. Rise up. Our duty is not to ask questions, but to clasp hands one and all and mount the ascent. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
There are 2 types of artist:those who create for others in mindthose who create for themselveseither way, none are truly independent.
Natasha Tsakos
A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.
Plato
Kindness affects more than severity.
Aesop
There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
Plato
Without Psychological Evolution there cannot be any form of revolution. The self is constantly changing. Be involved, be evolved, be revolutionized as lucent and fresh as the new wave hitting at the shore. Become the Sea of Changes. It starts from within.
Grigoris Deoudis
Everything flows and nothing stays.
Heraclitus
There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course a quiet conscience.
Euripides
So you say there is no Father Christmas,                                                                          You say there is no Santa Claus                                                                                         Reindeer cannot fly, it's all a grown-up lie...
M.C. Frank
Roses and thorns are parts of the same plant. Somehow though, some people are concerned mainly about the roses. The rose is not on the plant for more than a week, but the thorns are there forever.Roses are teaching that the beauty of life will bloom, once you have taught yourself the lessons given by living with the thorns.
Grigoris Deoudis
A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?
Mary Papas
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.
Plato
Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.
Homer
It is in changing that things find purpose.
Heraclitus
But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.
Plato
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!” - The Narrator.
Nikos Kazantzakis
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
Aeschylus
Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.
Socrates
When you've made up your mind, no use lagging behind, go ahead and no relenting,Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Character is destiny
Heraclitus
How many things there are which I do not want.
Socrates
It was an alien place, as much inhuman as it was ungodly. There was no life in this place. It was a different world altogether.This world was dead.
Angelo Tsanatelis
Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself.
Aesop
Titles are prisons of human potential
Natasha Tsakos
You know you are changing when you no longer have points of references. Mapping a new life.
Natasha Tsakos