Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Aristophanes - Page 2

Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.

Do you dare to accuse wine of clouding the reason? Quote me more marvelous effects than those of wine. Look! when a man drinks, he is rich, everything he touches succeeds, he gains lawsuits, is happy and helps his friends. Come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that I may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea.

The love of wine is a good man's failing.

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

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

How can I study from below, that which is above?

Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me.

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

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.

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

Calonice: My dear Lysistrata, just what is this matter you've summoned us women to consider.What's up? Something big? Lysistrata: Very big. Calonice: (interested) Is it stout too? Lysistrata: (smiling) Yes, indeed -- both big and stout. Calonice: What? And the women still haven't come? Lysistrata: It's not what you suppose; they'd come soon enough for that.

If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.

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.

Tis not for us to warn a wilful sinner; We stay him not, but let him run his course, Till by misfortunes rous'd, his conscience wakes, And prompts him to appease th' offended gods.

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.

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

When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.

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

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

Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.

Do not take a blind guide.

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.

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!

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.

A truce to idle phrases!

[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.

Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly...Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word!Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.

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

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.

The old are in a second childhood.

It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.

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

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!

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.

You can't have anything else to say: you've poured out every drop of what you know.

A slave is but half a man.

Old age is but a second childhood.

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

You will never make the crab walk straight.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

An actor should refine public taste.

A fox is subtlety itself.