top of page
Quotes by Greek Authors


"Is anyone in all the world safe from unhappiness?"

"Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends."

"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold."

"Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government."

"A life without investigation is not worth living."

"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."

"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock."

"Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good had been aptly described as that at which everything aims."

"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular."

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others."

"For there are two reasons why human beings face danger calmly: they may have no experience of it, or they may have means to deal with it: thus when in danger at sea people may feel confident about what will happen either because they have no experience of bad weather, or because their experience gives them the means of dealing with it."

"God save me from fools with a little philosophy-no one is more difficult to reach."


"I didn't say yes. I can say no to anything I say vile, and I don't have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards-all that your can do is to have me killed."

"What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions."


"To find yourself, think for yourself."

"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."


"Alas! How sad when reasoners reason wrong."

"Ruin and recovery are both from within."

"It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted."

"With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible."


"Whom Jupiter would destroy he first drives mad."
bottom of page