Aristophanes Quotes - Page 2

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

Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.

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.

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

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.

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

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

Old age is second childhood.

Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.

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

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.

Comedy is allied to justice.

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

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.