A Quote by Solon

Call no man happy before he dies, he is at best but fortunate.

Solon

Quote Topics

Death Before Best Call Dies Fortunate Happy Man

Quote Author

Solon
Greek - Statesman
638 BC - 558 BC

Call no man happy before he dies.

Herodotus

Before a man dies, hold back and call him not happy but lucky.

Herodotus

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

Solon

If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

Will Durant

An unlucky rich man is more capable of satisfying his desires and of riding out disaster when it strikes, but a lucky man is better off than him...He is the one who deserves to be described as happy. But until he is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate.

Solon

We should not call a city happy because it attracts masses of citizens from everywhere; a fortunate city is one in which the race of the original inhabitants is best preserved.

Isocrates

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Before and after... I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true.

Curtis Sittenfeld

Account no man happy till he dies.

Euripides

He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

Anais Nin

Man should ever look to his last day, and no one should be called happy before his funeral. [Lat., Ultima semper Expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo et suprema funera debet.]

Ovid

Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peace-time as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it.