Aristophanes Quotes

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

Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.

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

Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever

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

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.

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

By words the mind is winged.

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.

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

Old age is second childhood.

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

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

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.

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

Under every stone lurks a politician.

High thoughts must have high language.

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

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

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

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

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

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

Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.

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

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

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

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Open your mind before your mouth

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

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.

Today things are better than yesterday.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Comedy is allied to justice.

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

Evil events from evil causes spring.

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

Words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.

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