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Quotes by Greek Authors

"The art of being a slave is to rule one's master."

"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."

"The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for."

"The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them."

"I am not an Athenian nor a Greek but a citizen of the world."

"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."

"How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens."

"I know my own soul, how feeble and puny it is: I know the magnitude of this ministry, and the great difficulty of the work; for more stormy billows vex the soul of the priest than the gales which disturb the sea."

"It is hard to contend against one's heart's desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul."

"Once I was condemned to three months' absolute silence. As I could not speak, I wrote a book."

"To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils."

"My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry."

"I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?"

"Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod."

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."

"The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."

"Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly."

"Soon all of you immortalsWill be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for?Have you run out of thunderbolts?"
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