Aristophanes Quotes

A truce to idle phrases!

What matters that I was born a woman, if I can cure your misfortunes? I pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the State. But you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the Persian Wars. You pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. Have you one word to say for yourselves? ... Ah! don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy.

A slave is but half a man.

Wealth
the most excellent of all gods.

If it is necessary for us to do anything [in view of peace], direct us and architect.

πρὸς τάδ' ἡμῖν, εἴ τι χρὴ δρᾶν, φράζε κἀρχιτεκτόνει.

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.

You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.

Today things are better than yesterday.

You will never make the crab walk straight.

The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.

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

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

A man can learn wisdom even from a foe

A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.

One's country is wherever one does well.

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

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

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.

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

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

LYSISTRATA May gentle Love and the sweet Cyprian Queen shower seductive charms on our bosoms and all our person. If only we may stir so amorous a feeling among the men that they stand firm as sticks, we shall indeed deserve the name of peace-makers among the Greeks.

Lysistrata: "Calonice, it's more than I can bear,
I am hot all over with blushes for our sex.
Men say we're slippery rogues--"

Calonice: "And aren't they right?

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

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.

Politics, these days, is no occupation
for an educated man, a man of character.
Ignorance and total lousiness are better.

But how should women perform so wise and glorious an achievement, we women who dwell in the retirement of the household, clad in diaphanous garments of yellow silk and long flowing gowns, decked out with flowers and shod with dainty little slippers?

You cannot make a crab walk straight.

[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.

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

I must think of something foolproof for a fool.

Comedy is allied to justice.

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

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

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

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.

Chorus of old men: If we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! We shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights like Artemisia; nay if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier the knights, for indeed women excel in riding, and have a fine, firm seat for the gallop. Just think of all those squadrons of Amazons Micon has painted for us engaged in hand-to-hand combat with men.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Under every stone lurks a politician.

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

By words the mind is winged.

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

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

Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.

A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.

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.

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

Even from enemies much can be learned by the intelligent,
More in fact than from our friends.

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

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.

Under every rock lurks a politician.

Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

An actor should refine public taste.

Open your mind before your mouth

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

The man credited with inventing the comma, colon, and full stop punctuation marks was a librarian of Alexandria called Aristophanes.

You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.

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

That is what we do each time we see someone who falls in love with evil strategies, until we hurl him into misery, so he may learn to fear the Gods.

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

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

Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.

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

better not bring up a lion inside your city,
But if you must, then humour all his moods.

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.

Lewd to the least drop in the tiniest vein, Our sex is fitly food for Tragic Poets, Our whole life's but a pile of kisses and babies. But, hardy Spartan, if you join with me All may be righted yet. O help me, help me.

The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.

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.

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

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

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

A prudent person after all can pick something
Even from an enemy.

How can it ever be right to wreck
A man because he's time by the clock
As an elderly man grizzled and gray,
Who long ago struggled at your side
Mopping the copious
Manly sweat from his brow
When he bravely fought at Marathon
In defense of our city.

Lysistrata: To seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.

Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray?

Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves

Magistrate: You do?

Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses?

Magistrate: But that is not the same thing.

Lysistrata: How so – not the same thing?

Magistrate: It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War.

Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!

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.

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

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

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!

The swallows, fleeing before the hoopoes, shall have all flocked together in one place, and shall refrain them from all amorous commerce, then will be the end of all the ills of life; yea, and Zeus, which doth thunder in the skies, shall set above what was erst below ...

need a poet who can really write. Nowadays it seems like 'many are gone, and those that live are bad'.12

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

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.

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.

What can you answer? Now be careful, don't arouse my spite, Or with my slipper I'll take you napping,
faces slapping
Left and right.

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.

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

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

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

I was the first to make it understood
that reason could undermine the just premises of the good.

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

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

That man is sharp who can say what he wants in a minimum of words.

Do not take a blind guide.

I love him, oh! I love him; but he won't let himself be loved.

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.

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