Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 17

He's only harming himself who's bent upon harming another
Hesiod
A sight to touch e’en hatred’s self with pity.
Sophocles
Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successively through comprehension, mercy, and sympathy, can be transformed into love.
Nikos Kazantzakis
You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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
As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.
Plato
Some people are wonderful, some wonderless.
Natasha Tsakos
I have been under the influence- of boggling information over the years.
Natasha Tsakos
Running wild in a field of exclamations, chasing question marks
Natasha Tsakos
We don’t think, we think we think
Natasha Tsakos
There can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man, who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters both.
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
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus
Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "i"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "i". And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Man is the vainest of allcreatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heavenvouchsafes him health and strength, he thinks that he shall come tono harm hereafter, and even when the blessed gods bring sorrow uponhim, he bears it as he needs must, and makes the best of it; forGod Almighty gives men their daily minds day by day. I know allabout it, for I was a rich man once, and did much wrong in thestubbornness of my pride, and in the confidence that my father andmy brothers would support me; therefore let a man fear God in allthings always, and take the good that heaven may see fit to sendhim without vainglory.
Homer
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
Plato
I meet people and they enforce me their culture and then I choose to fly away and I meet other people and these people force me their religion and I wanna fly away. I meet other people, these people are silent, we begin to sing the song of the ocean and then we fly away together ~
Grigoris Deoudis
The ideal of a well-stocked mind aiming at excellence in all walks of life has been replaced by the dream of a well-stocked wine cellar, the cellar now being a specially made wine cooler strategically placed in one’s house, to be viewed by even the most unobservant visitor.
Dimitris Mita
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
What is honored in a culture gets cultivated there.
Plato
If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.
Herodotus
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
G.I. Gurdjieff
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
Socrates
My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" -Socrates
Socrates
No. I don't believe in anything. How many times must I tell you that? I don't believe in anything anyone; only in Zorba. Not because Zorba is better than the others; not at all, not a little bit! He's a brute like the rest! But I believe in Zorba because he's the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you. When I die, everything'll die. The whole Zorbatic world will go to the bottom!
Nikos Kazantzakis
The tongue of man is a twisty thing.
Homer
To excavate is to open a book written in the language that the centuries have spoken into the earth.
Spyridon Marinatos
The misuse of language induces evil in the soul
Socrates
You'll know you're doing something right if you feel you don't know what you're doing... if you know what you are doing, you are doing it right- but you might just repeating yourself...
Natasha Tsakos
Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
Nikos Kazantzakis
The touched heart madly stirs,your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles - every gesture is a proclamation,every sound is speech...
Sappho
With chilling care, my hardshipshave managed to implant a spiritof recklessness within me,one that impels me to point out injustice and wrongdoing.So, while many strive to have a toil free life, I spend my time criticizing tyrants,and so the spirit of subversion was quickly established within me. Now all I can do is calmly wait for cold death to seize me.
Alcaeus of Mytilene
...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.
Homer
He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act
Plato
I think they are a better race than humans ever were.
Angelo Tsanatelis
Doubt is what keeps the heart and mind of every man alive. It 's what makes us think twice.
Vasileios Kalampakas
How typical of a machine to think it knows better.
Vasileios Kalampakas
[I would] rather discover one cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.
Democritus
Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?
Plato
In my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander's own... that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great---the victory over himself.
Arrian
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
Euripides
["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
[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
All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.
Sophocles
Evil gains work their punishment.
Sophocles
To make an action honorable, it ought to be agreeable to the age, and other circumstances of the person; since it is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.
Plutarch
I am determined that never, if I can help it,Shall evil triumph over good." - Creon
Sophocles
The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.
Sophocles
Whatever fate ordains, danger or hurt, or death predetermined, nothing can avert.
Theognis
The powe if fate is something terrible. It cannot be escaped--not with wealth or by war, not with a tower ir a sea-lashed black ship.
Sophocles
Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.
Democritus
Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.
Heraclitus of Ephesus
But they could neither of them persuade me, for there is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his parents, and however splendid a home he may have in a foreign country, if it be far from father or mother, he does not care about it.
Homer
Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,even so I will endure…For already have I suffered full much,and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.Let this be added to the tale of those.
Homer
I hope for what I always hope for as a writer: a critical but kind reader. I think that is what we all hope for.
Christos Tsiolkas
The swing between confronting the dangerous or brutal and the beautiful or the kind is one of the elements of being human that I have battled with all my life. That mixture of love and savagery is there in every important relationship in our lives: with parents, siblings, lovers, our closest friends. I have always wanted to be faithful to that truth.
Christos Tsiolkas
Contemporary writers annoyed him, he found their worlds insular, their style too self-conscious and ironic. Theirs was not a literature that belonged to him.
Christos Tsiolkas
I swooned again – I had that moment of falling in love with reading again.
Christos Tsiolkas
I couldn’t admit to any of the boys I hung out with that I wanted to fuck ’em, so my erotic life was in my imagination and in the body.
Christos Tsiolkas
The best way of writing sex scenes is to do the first draft, orgasm, and then start editing. You can be objective post-orgasm.
Christos Tsiolkas