Quotes from Aristophanes

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

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.

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.

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

Is this doing you harm, that we shower blessings on all men?

Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.

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

Today things are better than yesterday.

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.

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

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

A slave is but half a man.

Sir, sir what good are words? They are of no avail with wild beasts of this sort. Don't you know how they have just washed us down--and with no very fragrant soap!

An actor should refine public taste.

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

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

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

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!

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.

And do you too grunt with joy and follow your mother, my little pigs?

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

Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives.

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.

Do not take a blind guide.