Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 15

Nature loves to hide.
Heraclitus
So long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist
Epicurus
You cannot step into the same river twice
Heraclitus of Ephesus
The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” ― Plato, Plato's Republic
Plato
Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.
Socrates
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet
Plato
All I know is that I do not know anything
Socrates
How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.
Epictetus
The philosopher often appears ridiculous in the practical affairs of life, because he or she has stepped out of the rush of time.
Theaetetus
If your callswere measures of Time,a day would last a centuryand in between us would beAn Eternity.
Natasha Tsakos
...I do not believe that the law of God permits a better man to be harmed by a worse. No doubt my accuser might put me to death or have me banished or deprived of civic rights; but even if he thinks, as he probably does (and others to, I dare say), that these are great calamities, I do not think so... For let me tell you, gentlemen, that to be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a man; but people dread it as though they were certain that it is the greatest evil; and this ignorance, which thinks that it knows what it does not, must surely be ignorance most culpable. This, I take it, gentlemen, is the degree, and this is the nature of my advantage over the rest of mankind; and if I were to claim to be wiser than my neighbour in any respect, it would be in this: that not possessing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it. But I do know that to do wrong and to disobey my superior, whether God or man, is wicked and dishonourable; and so I shall never feel more fear or aversion for something which, for all I know, may really be a blessing, than for those evils which I know to be evils.
Socrates
Endure, my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear
Homer
The man she wanted existed only in the romantic novels she was reading. She had met him. But he would never meet her.
Mary Papas
David had left her,taking his insane jealousy with him.
Mary Papas
I thought these grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.
Aesop
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.
Plutarch
It is not so much what happens to you as how you think about what happens." Epictetus
Epictetus
No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.
Plato
The author's Socrates admonishes paramount awareness human limitations. If we do good to those we evaluate as good and evil to those we evaluate at the evil, and we are wrong, we have been made the world less just.
Plato
Our superintendence in instruction and discipline is the office of the Word, from whom we learn frugality and humility, and all that pertains to love of truth, love of humanity, and love of excellence. And so, in a word, being assimilated to God by participation in moral excellence, we must not retrograde into carelessness and sloth. But labor, and faint not.
Clement of Alexandria
For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.
Sophocles
It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
Epictetus
Blushing is the color of virtue.
Diogenes of Sinope
I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.
Plato
If we were fossils of two snails caught in a rock for millions of years.Would we know we were together?
Natasha Tsakos
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
Those who have castrated themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, are blessed; they abstain from the world.
Clement of Alexandria
For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force.
John Chrysostom
...[I]f at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment; and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy - if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated?
Socrates
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
One day, the old wise Socrates walks down the streets, when all of the sudden a man runs up to him "Socrates I have to tell you something about your friend who...""Hold up" Socrates interrupts him "About the story you're about to tell me, did you put it trough the three sieves?""Three sieves?" The man asks "What three sieves?""Let's try it" Socrates says."The first sieve is the one of truth, did you examine what you were about to tell me if it is true?" Socrates asks."Well no, I just overheard it" The man says."Ah, well then you have used the second sieve, the sieve of good?" Socrates asks "Is it something good what you're about to tell me?""Ehm no, on the contrary" the man answers."Hmmm" The wise man says "Let's use the third sieve then, is it necessary to tell me what you're so exited about?""No not necessary" the man says."Well" Socrates says with a smile "If the story you're about to tell me isn't true, good or necessary, just forget it and don't bother me with it.
Socrates
Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus
The Perfect Person's Rule of Life:The perfect person does not only try to avoid evil. Nor does he do good for fear of punishment, still less in order to qualify for the hope of a promised reward.The perfect person does good through love.His actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit, so he does not have personal advantage as his aim. But as soon as he has realized the beauty of doing good, he does it with all his energies and in all that he does.He is not interested in fame, or a good reputation, or a human or divine reward.The rule of life for a perfect person is to be in the image and likeness of God.
Clement of Alexandria
...a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods.
Socrates
Every woman is as bitter as gall. But she has two good moments: one in bed, the other at her death.
Palladas
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
Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.
Hippocrates
Look to the nervous system as the key to maximum health.
Galen
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
Herophilus
Your edict, King, was strong,But all your strength is weakness itself againstThe immortal unrecorded laws of God.They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.I knew I must die, even without your decree:I am only mortal. And if I must dieNow, before it is my time to die,Surely this is no hardship: can anyoneLiving, as I live, with evil all about me,Think Death less than a friend?
Sophocles
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.
Socrates
Justice without compassion is but tyranny
Nicholas C. Rossis
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
[W]hen men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil…
Plato
In a just cause the weak will beat the strong!
Sophocles
...in the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he'd done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will.
Plato
You know well as I do that when we are talking on the human plane, questions of justice only arise when there is equal power to compel: in terms of practicality the dominant exact what they can and the weak concede what they must. (Said by Athenian envoy to the Melians)
Thucydides
A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.
Socrates
The kosmos works by harmony of tensions, like lyre and bow. Good and evil are one. On the one hand God sees all as well, fair, and good; on the other hand a human being sees injustice here, justice there. Justice in our minds is strife. We cannot help but see war makes us as we are.
Heraclitus
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
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
ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. (...) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice.
Aeschylus
Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.
Thucydides
In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.
Euripides
The value is in the worth, not in the number.
Aesop
Concerning the gods I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much to prevent one's knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man's life.
Protagoras
Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are free from the grasp, not of one mad master only, but of many.
Plato
The emotional states are liberated inside water, we calm down emotionally, we become more sensitive, we are able to "touch" deeper ourselves and other beings. Empathy is echoing back to us giving subtle vibrations from the realm of the senses. Find your water ~
Grigoris Deoudis
Creatures of a day. What is someone? What is no one? Man is the dream of a shadow.
Pindar
Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others as long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous.
Thucydides