Aristophanes Quotations

Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

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

Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.

Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.

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

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.

These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: can't live with them, or without them!

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

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

There's no art where there's no fee.

One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.

An actor should refine public taste.

One bush, they say, can never hide two thieves.

Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways, are the children of Men.

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a Centaur, a Part, or a Wolf, or a Bull?

Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.

There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!

Does it seem that everything is extravagance in the world, or rather madness, when you watch the way things go? A crowd of rogues enjoy blessings they have won by sheer injustice, while more honest folks are miserable and die of hunger.

It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.

What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.

A slave is but half a man.

It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.

Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.

Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me.

Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .

You cannot make a crab walk straight.

[Y]ou [man] are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with [woman=] me, when for your faithful ally you might win me easily.

Surely you do not believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

Old age is but a second childhood.

The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.

The old are in a second childhood.

You're mistaken; men of sense often learn much from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learnt from a friend: but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes and not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.

How can I study from below, that which is above?

Evil events from evil causes spring.

Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.

You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.

Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master, At which the audience never fail to laugh?

Do you dare to accuse wine of clouding the reason? Quote me more marvelous effects than those of wine. Look! when a man drinks, he is rich, everything he touches succeeds, he gains lawsuits, is happy and helps his friends. Come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that I may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea.

The love of wine is a good man's failing.

If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.

Do not take a blind guide.

Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.

An insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud.

It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.

Evil events from evil causes spring, And what you suffer flows from what you've done.

You can't have anything else to say: you've poured out every drop of what you know.

A fox is subtlety itself.

If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.

I would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; I would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face.

Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly...Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word!Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.

A truce to idle phrases!

Chorus of women: [...] Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let you anger slacken; the wind of fortune blown our way.

It is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, I believe, which no one will gainsay.

Old age is second childhood.

When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.

An ancient tradition declares that every idiot blunder we pass into law will sooner or later redound to Athens' profit.

Tis not for us to warn a wilful sinner; We stay him not, but let him run his course, Till by misfortunes rous'd, his conscience wakes, And prompts him to appease th' offended gods.

Today things are better than yesterday.

A man should be able to stand up under any disaster for his country's good.

You will never make the crab walk straight.

Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.

To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.

When the soldier returns from the wars, even though he has white hair, he very soon finds a young wife. But a woman has only one summer; if she does not make hay while the sun shines, no one will afterwards have anything to say to her, and she spends her days consulting oracles that never send her a husband.

It is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy.

There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.

I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet.

A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.

Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.

Mix and knead together all the state business as you do for your sausages. To win the people, always cook them some savory that pleases them.

No man is really honest; none of us is above the influence of gain.

[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.

Open your mind before your mouth

Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!

Thou shouldst not decide until thou hast heard what both have to say.

Comedy is allied to justice.

To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.

Calonice: My dear Lysistrata, just what is this matter you've summoned us women to consider.What's up? Something big? Lysistrata: Very big. Calonice: (interested) Is it stout too? Lysistrata: (smiling) Yes, indeed -- both big and stout. Calonice: What? And the women still haven't come? Lysistrata: It's not what you suppose; they'd come soon enough for that.

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

Women, you overheated dipsomaniacs, never passing up a chance to wangle a drink, a great boon to bartenders but a bane to us--not to mention our crockery and our woolens!

If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.

By words the mind is winged.

The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.

First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.

To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.

High thoughts must have high language.

When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought Should contrive our fees to pilfer, on who for his native land Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true.