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Quotes by Greek Authors

"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals."

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men."

"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."


"No man undertakes a trade he has not learned even the meanest yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades - that of government."

"I would prefer as a friend a good man who is ignorant than one more clever who is evil too."

"If you would be a reader read if a writer write."

"For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first."


"Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problems of wheat."

"My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake."

"Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it."

"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny."

"The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile."

"I think the Swedish Academy wished to manifest its solidarity with the living spirit of Greece today."

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them."

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles."

"There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course a quiet conscience."

"Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire."

"It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit."

"Again, where the people are absolute rulers of the land, they rejoice in having the openness and exuberance of youth, while a tyrant counts this a danger, and seeks to slay or silence those possessed of spirit, while the discreet fear his power and violence."

"It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other."

"The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication."
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