Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 16

For Time calls only once, and that determines all.
Sophocles
Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end,came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever.
Plato
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
And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved.
Homer
...men unite against none so readily as against those whom theysee attempting to rule over them.
Xenophon
The State is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the State and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me.
Plato
Thou wouldst make a good monarch of a desert
Sophocles
Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?
Socrates
I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.
Sophocles
There is no greater evil than men's failure to consult and to consider.
Sophocles
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
He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age. But to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.
Plato
...[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
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
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
Plutarch
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity – I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.
Plato
We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.
Socrates
I didn't say yes. I can say no to anything I say vile, and I don't have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards—all that your can do is to have me killed.
Sophocles
I declareThat later on,Even in an age unlike our own,Someone will remember who we are.
Sappho van Lesbos
The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.
Plutarch
It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs, therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.
Isocrates
If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him.
Plato
He is not a lover who does not love forever.
Euripides
The unfolding of a Spermatic Aura like a sheet in the Universe. That we are ~
Grigoris Deoudis
Number rules the universe.
Pythagoras
First, I have not minded so much leaving the Garden because God, blessed be his holy name, has never abandoned us.
Katerina Whitley
What does matter is that you understand this one great truth I have learned in my life: having knowledge, even at the expense of leaving the Garden, has been worth it. For it is through this great gift of knowledge that I have understood something of the Creator's power - yes, even the Creator's love. Out of what seemed punishment, came a great good; out of physical pain, all of you have emerged. The pain has been forgotten while the pleasure of your presence endures. Adam and I have known joy - how would we have tasted it had we not known its opposite, sorrow? And we have seen how darkness is dispelled when light arrives, night and day, after night and day. We never tire of it.
Katerina Whitley
Silent people are those who have too much to say
Nicholas C. Rossis
Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Silence is better than unmeaning words.
Pythagoras
Your very silence shows you agree.
Euripides
Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. I'm not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I'm somewhere in between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That's not too bad, after all!'He looked at me wickedly and started laughing.'As for you, boss,' he said, 'I think you do your level best to turn what you eat into God. But you can't quite manage it, and that torments you. The same thing's happening to you as happened to the crow.''What happened to the crow, Zorba?''Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly - well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time on the poor fellow couldn't for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don't you see? He just hobbled about.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I’m told, into God.” - Zorba.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Let food be thy your medicine
Hippocrates
Instead of going out on Saturday night as planned, I decided to stay in with a few of my closest friends from the complex carbohydrate family. Well actually, like most of my friends, they're not that complex.
Angela Pippos
If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.
Philip
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
Hippocrates
No secret can remain hidden for ever. Silently and patiently, it waits in the dark. It lets you build your life, carefully stacking the bricks one by one, and then it appears. It deals its blow and everything crumbles. That’s why it remains intact and incorruptible in time, waiting for its ultimate destiny to be revealed.
Stefanos Livos
It is more disgraceful for a king to tell lies than anyone else.
Arrian
People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way -even when those stories concern their own native counties...Most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are more inclined to accept the first story they hear.
Thucydides
And where there is ignorance, there is also want of learning and instruction in essentials.
Epictetus
Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?
Socrates
Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
Thucydides
I will blame no enemy that is a good man, nor yet praise a friend that is bad
Theognis
...[F]rom me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different.
Socrates
For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.
Plutarch
Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and gives them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune...
Plutarch
Then as for those who gaze upon many beautiful things but don't see the beautiful itself, and aren't even capable of following someone else who leads them to it, and upon many just things but not the just itself, and all the things like that, we'll claim that they accept the seeming of everything but discern nothing of what they have opinions about.
Plato
The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Her grandparents’ house was an old crammed up space just like all the others there, but to Sofia it had the luxuries of a palace and the reverence of a church.
Effrosyni Moschoudi
And all these things she always counted on to revisit, they made up a map, the map of a true home. It was the only place where she felt she had an identity and a history behind her.
Effrosyni Moschoudi
The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.
Plato
Increasingly, Christian life seems to be nothing more than a particular way of behaving, a code of good conduct. Christianity is increasingly alienated, becoming a social attribute adapted to meet the least worthy of human demands - conformity, sterile conservatism, pusillanimity and timidity; it is adapted to the trivial moralizing which seeks to adorn cowardice and individual security with the funerary decoration of social decorum.
Christos Yannaras
One enjoys the good things more to the extent that one goes to them after having labored in advance, for labors are a sauce for good things
Xenphon Ephesius
for that men have been good does not suffice for them to continue being good, unless one cares about it to the end.
Xenphon Ephesius
The only crime is pride.
Sophocles
To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words.
Euripides
We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.
Hierocles
...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
But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.
Plutarch