Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 25

First say to yourself what you would beand then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
Every specific human being, however, thinks, judges, imagines, wills and expresses himself or herself in a unique, dissimilar, and unrepeatable mode--a mode of unpredictable difference, or otherness, which objectively defies description or delimitation.
Christos Yannaras
To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance)really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being.
Christos Yannaras
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire the other is to get it.
Socrates
The one great art is that of making a complete human being of oneself.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.
Plutarch
It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.
Plato
The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
Diogenes of Sinope
Learning is by nature curiosity... prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.
Philo of Alexandria
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.
Plato
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.
Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life
Plato
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
Plato
That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.
Plato
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
Only the educated are free.
Epictetus
True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create theirown.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Socrates
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
You only have to doze a moment, and all is lost. For ruin and salvation both have their source inside you.
Epictetus
The condition and characteristic of an uninstructed person is this: he never expects from himself profit (advantage) nor harm, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is this: he expects all advantage and all harm from himself.
Epictetus
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance
Plato
Because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known.
Heraclitus
Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought; short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil; then are they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the world; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole—vain fools! for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain.
Empedocles
...[T]hese people... are my dangerous accusers because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters... theories about the heavens... and everything below the earth... must be an atheist.
Socrates
For it is not needful, to use a common proverb, that one should drink up the ocean who wishes to learn that its water is salt.
Irenaeus of Lyons
Those swift to think are not always secure.
Sophocles
And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.
Plato
Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned.
Plato
No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.
Democritus
Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…
Plato
Those who don't know must learn from those who do.
Plato
Many much-learned men have no intelligence.
Democritus
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
Hippocrates
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
Plato
Alas, how terrible is wisdomwhen it brings no profit to the man that's wise!This I knew well, but had forgotten it,else I would not have come here.
Sophocles
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
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Plato
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato
Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
...[T]hose who care about their souls and do not subordinate them to the body dissociate themselves firmly from these others and refuse to accompany them on their haphazard journey; and, believing that it is wrong to oppose philosophy with her offer of liberation and purification, they turn and follow her wherever she leads...
Socrates
You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.
Nikos Kazantzakis
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates
...I have had a remarkable experience. In the past the prophetic voice to which I have become accustomed has always been my constant companion, opposing me even in quite trivial things if I was going to take the wrong course. Now something has happened to me, as you can see, which might be thought and is commonly considered to be a supreme calamity; yet neither when I left home this morning, nor when I was taking my place here in court, nor at any point in any part of my speech did the divine sign oppose me. In other discussions it has often checked me in the middle of a sentence; but this time it has never opposed me in any part of this business in anything that I have said or done. What do I suppose to be the explanation? I will tell you. I suspect that this thing that has happened to me is a blessing, and we are quite mistaken in supposing death to be an evil. I have good grounds for thinking this, because my accustomed sign could not have failed to oppose me if what I was doing had not been sure to bring some good result.
Socrates
and what happens around us ,simply happens because we haven't learned to love .Till this moment ,people would have to go through the same paths ,experience similar events ,blinded ,full of wrath,imprisoned and bounded by themselves.They will star at their fellows seeing what they are unable to see on themselves....Themselves!
Katerina Kostaki
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
Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.
Plato
For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.
Socrates
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates
How many things can I do without?
Socrates
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
Writing is the geometry of the soul.
Plato
If you wish to be a writer, write.
Epictetus
Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason.
Clement of Alexandria
Concerning the Gods, there are those who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say that it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself not has forethought far anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as in heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, of whom were Ulysses and Socrates, are those that cry: --I move not without Thy knowledge!
Epictetus
Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.
G.I. Gurdjieff
…Perses, hear me out on justice, and take what I have to say to heart; cease thinking of violence. For the son of Kronos, Zeus, has ordained this law to men: that fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.
Hesiod
Death makes its own choices. Has reasoning an order has a taste…
Angelo Tsanatelis