Quotes by Greek Authors - Page 27

I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that here if anywhere I should succeed in disproving the oracle and pointing out to my divine authority 'You said that I was the wisest of men, but here is a man who is wiser than I am.' Well, I gave a thorough examination to this person... and in conversation with him I formed the impression that although in many people's opinion, and especially in his own, he appeared to be wise, in fact he was not. Then when I began to try to show him that he only thought he was wise and was not really so, my efforts were resented both by him and by many of the other people present. However, I reflected as I walked away: 'Well, I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know... [A]s I pursued my investigation at the god's command,... my honest impression was... that the people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.
Socrates
...[R]eal wisdom is the property of God, and... human wisdom has little or no value.
Socrates
If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time; and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape of security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training...
Socrates
Well-being is attained little by little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.
Zeno of Citium
The Wise are Superb Observers of Nature and Rise Superior to the Blows of Fortune
Philo of Alexandria
Prefiero, señor, obrar bien y fracasar, antes que triunfar con malas artes.Palabras de Neoptólemo a Odiseo, en la tragedia griega Filoctetes.
Sophocles
It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.
Diogenes of Sinope
yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful thingsand your tongue were not concocting some evil to sayshame would not hold down your eyesbut rather you would speak about what is just
Sappho
Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.
Homer
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Plato
A soul that is kind and intends justice discovers more than any sophist
Sophocles
It is much better to die of hunger unhindered by grief and fear than to live affluently beset with worry, dread, suspicion and unchecked desire.
Epictetus
Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.
Plutarch
The good and wise lead quite lives
Euripides
Leave no stone unturned.
Euripides
Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?
Euripides
Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.
Isocrates
Wisdom comes alone through suffering.
Aeschylus
Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.
Homer
Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.
Plato
Once a wolf, always a wolf.
Aesop
No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth
Aesop
The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.
Epicurus
Cleverness is not wisdom.
Euripides
Wisdom comes through suffering.Trouble, with its memories of pain,Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,So men against their willLearn to practice moderation.Favours come to us from gods.
Aeschylus
I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.
Plato
The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.
Socrates
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer
Anger exceeding limits causes fear and excessive kindness eliminates respect.
Euripides
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
Socrates
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates
The Limit of Happiness Is the Presence of GodBut it is something great that Abraham asks, namely that God shall not pass by nor remove to a distance and leave his soul desolate and empty (Gen. 18:3). For the limit of happiness is the presence of God, which completely fills the whole soul with his whole incorporeal and eternal light.
Philo of Alexandria
For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits.
Longus
What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he doth this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes?
Euripides
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, as it pleases him, for he can do all things.
Homer
Is it not the same distance to God everywhere?
Epictetus
God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.
Empedocles
He who exercises wisdom, exercises the knowledge which is about God.
Epictetus
God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods...
Socrates
He was a wise man who invented God.
Plato
God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
Socrates
Men always makes gods in their own image.
Xenophanes
Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?
Arianna Huffington
If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Epicurus
Was man wünscht, das glaubt auch jeder.
Demosthenes
Error, indeed is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced more true than truth itself.
Irenaeus of Lyons
Sister - if all this is true, what could I do or undo?
Sophocles
Nothing forces us to knowWhat we do not want to knowExcept pain
Aeschylus
Whether Hindus or Greeks, Egyptians or Japanese, Chinese, Sumerians, or ancient Americans -- or even Romans, the most "modern" among people of antiquity -- they all placed the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, the rule of Kronos or of Ra or of any other gods on earth -- the glorious beginning of the slow, downward unfurling of history, whatever name it be given -- far behind them in the past.
Savitri Devi
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
Savitri Devi
Too many kings can ruin an army
Homer
Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?
Plato
Reproach is infinite, and knows no endSo voluble a weapon is the tongue;Wounded, we wound; and neither side can failFor every man has equal strength to rail.
Homer
No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had done so.
Xenophon
The truth is what I cherish and that's my strength
Sophocles
That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.
Hesiod
Nothing is easier than self-deceit.For what every man wishes,that he also believes to be true.
Demosthenes
Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!
Galen
[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.
Homer