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Quotes by Greek Authors
"The beginning is the most important part of the work."
"Life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasantest, since this, more than anything else, constitutes humanity."
"What fate can be worse than to know we have no one but ourselves to blame for our misfortunes!"
"We must pronounce him fortunate who has ended his life in fair prosperity."
"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."
"1 loathe a friend ... who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief."
"Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life."
"In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one."
"All began to change in the reverse direction and grow more tender. The white hair of the elderly began to grow black; the cheeks of the bearded to grow smooth, and one and all to return to the season of bloom that they had left behind them. Young men's bodies grew smoother and smaller day by day and night by night till they reverted alike in mind and body to the likes of a newborn infant, and then dwindled right away and were clean lost to sight."
"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."
"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."
"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself."
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
"Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower."
"There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?"
"We are not troubled by things but by the opinion which we have of things."
"One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been."
"In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society."
"A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state."
"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do."
"The ideal man, takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it."
"A wise fellow who is also worthless always charms the rabble."
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