Greek Poet Quotations

If we thought it would improve our relationship, we would get married tomorrow, but as it is, nearly 7 years after we got engaged, we are content to wait.

Don't ask who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.

What you make up in your heads sticks if it's good, falls out if it's bad. If we still remember something a day after we made it up, it might be worth building on.

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it.

We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.

He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.

Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

He fashions evil for himself who does evil to another, and an evil plan does mischief to the planner.

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.

The person who has the will to undergo all labor may win any goal.

The sword the body wounds, sharp words the mind.

Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.

You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.

For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune.

A bad neighbor is as great a calamity as a good one is a great advantage.

Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.

To him who is in fear everything rustles.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

If you add a little to a little, and then do it again, soon that little shall be much.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor's wall is ablaze.

If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.

What atonement is there for blood spilt upon the earth?

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

Bronze in the mirror of the form, wine of the mind.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.

The man who does ill must suffer ill.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

I strive to be brief but I become obscure.

All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad.

When a man has lost all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.

Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away.

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

Whoever understands how to do a kindness when he fares well would be a friend better than any possession.

If a man's fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

For shameful deeds are taught by shameful deeds.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

It is good even for old men to learn wisdom.

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

Men may know many things by seeing; but no prophet can see before the event, nor what end waits for him.

Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

Time as he grows old teaches all things.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

He gains everyone's approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in the truth.

Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected.

A soul that is kind and intends justice discovers more than any sophist.

Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.

It's a terrible thing to speak well and be wrong.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.

Much wisdom often goes with brevity of speech.

Obedience is the mother of success, and success the parent of salvation.

Two urns on Jove's high throne have ever stood,The source of evil one, and one of good; From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,Blessings to these, to those distributes ills;To most he mingles both.

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.

Friends show their love in times of trouble.

Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.