Quotes from Pindar

O bright and violet-crowned and famed in song, bulwark of Greece, famous Athens, divine city!

Words have a longer life than deeds.

Unsung, the noblest deed will die.

It is not possible with mortal mind to search out the purposes of the gods.

Water is best. But gold shines like fire blazing in the night, supreme of lordly wealth.

Creatures of a day, what is a man? What is he not? Mankind is a dream of a shadow. But when a god-given brightness comes, a radiant light rests on men, and a gentle life.

Hope, which most of all guides the changeful mind of mortals.

Men are the dreams of a shadow.

Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.

Zeus, accomplisher, to all grant grave restraint and attainment of sweet delight.

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

When toilsome contests have been decided, good cheer is the best physician, and songs, the sage daughters of the Muses, soothe with their touch.

I will not steep my speech in lies; the test of any man lies in action.

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

Even wisdom has to yield to self-interest.

Do not peer too far.

What is God? Everything.

The issue is in God's hands.

I have many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to the wise, but for the crowd they need interpreters. The skilled poet is one who knows much through natural gift, but those who have learned their art chatter turbulently, vainly, against the divine bird of Zeus.

They say that this lot is bitterest: to recognize the good but by necessity to be barred from it.

If one but tell a thing well, it moves on with undying voice, and over the fruitful earth and across the sea goes the bright gleam of noble deeds ever unquenchable.

If any man hopes to do a deed without God's knowledge, he errs.

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.