ThursdayJan 29, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
The worst enemy is one that fears the gods.
Only one accomplishment is beyond both the power and the mercy of the Gods. They cannot make the past as though it had never been.
By suffering comes wisdom.
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
Ask the gods nothing excessive.
Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.
Death is better, a milder mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?
Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed By hymns of praise. From him alone of all The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.
God is not averse to deceit in a holy cause.
Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
She [Helen] brought to Ilium her dowry, destruction.
So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft, 'With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.'
His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.
Fear is stronger than arms.
There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place.
A prosperous fool is a grievous burden.
Good fortune is a god among men, and more than a god.
For only Zeus is free.
Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy.
What is pleasanter that the tie of host and guest?
The future you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it.
God loves to help him who strives to help himself.
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
Every ruler is harsh whose laws are new.
High fortune, this in man's eye is god and more than god is this.
It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
Honor modesty more than your life.
'Honour thy father and thy mother' stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.
Exiles feed on hope.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Do not kick against the pricks.
Justice, voiceless, unseen, seeth thee when thou sleepest and when thou goest forth and when thou liest down. Continually doth she attend thee, now aslant thy course, now at a later time. These lines are from a section of doubtful or spurious fragments.
Myriad laughter of the ocean waves.
The force of necessity is irresistible.
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
The man whose authority is recent is always stern.
Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.
God's mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.
Memory is the mother of all wisdom.
Alas, I am struck a deep mortal blow!
... against necessity, against its strength, no one can fight and win.
Old men are always young enough to learn with profit.
Reverence for parents stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.
I pray the gods some respite from the weary task of this long year's watch that lying on the Atreidae's roof on bended arm, dog- like, I have kept, marking the conclave of all night's stars, those potentates blazing in the heavens that bring winter and summer to mortal men, the constellations, when they wane, when they rise.
It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
A great ox stands on my tongue.
A state that is prosperous always honors the gods.
Only when man's life comes to end in prosperity can one call that man happy.
Drop, drop in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls, memory's pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God. The above lines are from Edith Hamilton, translator, Three Greek Plays, p. 170 (1937). Other translations of this passage from Aeschylus vary. Robert F. Kennedy, delivering an extemporaneous eulogy to Martin Luther King, Jr., the evening of April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana, said, 'Aeschylus wrote: 'In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' These words, lacking 'own,' have been used as one of the inscriptions at the Robert F. Kennedy gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery.
In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. Quoted by Robert F. Kennedy, delivering an extemporaneous eulogy to Martin Luther King, Jr., the evening of April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana. These words, lacking 'own,' have been used as one of the inscriptions at the Robert F. Kennedy gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery.
Success is man's god.
When a man is willing and eager, the gods join in.
For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow: it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.
The reward of suffering is experience.
Sweet is a grief well ended.
The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite.
To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift.
Time as he grows old teaches many lessons.
Time brings all things to pass.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
He who goes unenvied shall not be admired.
Wisdom cometh by suffering.
Chorus: Zeus, who guided men to think who laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our pleasure we are temperate.
He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our own will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.
The wisest of the wise may err.
... it is yours [women's] to be silent and stay within doors.
Words are healers of the sick tempered.
There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.
I pray for no more youth To perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time. Senator Edward Kennedy quoted this passage in testimony before the Commission on Campus Unrest, July 15, 1970. Congressional Record, vol. 116, p. 24309.
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