Aristophanes Quotes - Page 4

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!

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.

A fox is subtlety itself.

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.

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

Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day, Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!

Do not take a blind guide.

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

The old are in a second childhood.

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

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

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.

You will never make the crab walk straight.

A truce to idle phrases!

An actor should refine public taste.

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.

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

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.

A slave is but half a man.

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

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.

[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.

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

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

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.