Top 100 Aristophanes Quotes
#1. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
Aristophanes
#2. To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.
Aristophanes
#3. Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war; and this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.
Aristophanes
#4. [Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.
Aristophanes
#5. Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.
Aristophanes
#6. Even from enemies much can be learned by the intelligent,
More in fact than from our friends.
Aristophanes
#8. One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.
Aristophanes
#9. 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.
Aristophanes
#10. The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.
Aristophanes
#11. 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.
Aristophanes
#12. Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.
Aristophanes
#13. MEN Ah cursed drab, what have you brought this water for? WOMEN What is your fire for then, you smelly corpse? Yourself to burn?
Aristophanes
#14. I must think of something foolproof for a fool.
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#17. Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
Aristophanes
#18. Lysistrata: To seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.
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#19. What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!
Aristophanes
#20. Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
Aristophanes
#21. Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.
Aristophanes
#22. A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.
Aristophanes
#23. 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.
Aristophanes
#27. 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.
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#28. 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!
Aristophanes
#29. If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.
Aristophanes
#30. The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.
Aristophanes
#31. I was the first to make it understood
that reason could undermine the just premises of the good.
Aristophanes
#32. To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.
Aristophanes
#33. You will never make the crab walk straight.
Aristophanes
#34. You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.
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#36. Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .
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#37. Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master, At which the audience never fail to laugh?
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#38. There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!
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#39. Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.
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#40. Politics, these days, is no occupation
for an educated man, a man of character.
Ignorance and total lousiness are better.
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#41. It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.
Aristophanes
#42. Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
Aristophanes
#43. Love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.
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#45. It is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy.
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#46. 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.
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#47. 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.
Aristophanes
#48. How can I study from below, that which is above?
Aristophanes
#49. Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!
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#50. 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.
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#51. I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet.
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#53. Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways, are the children of Men.
Aristophanes
#54. 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?
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#55. Thou shouldst not decide until thou hast heard what both have to say.
Aristophanes
#57. 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.
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#58. That man is sharp who can say what he wants in a minimum of words.
Aristophanes
#59. When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.
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#60. Chorus of old men: How true the saying: 'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em.
Aristophanes
#61. Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!
Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business.
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#63. First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.
Aristophanes
#64. Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.
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#65. 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.
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#66. 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.
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#67. No man is really honest; none of us is above the influence of gain.
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#68. Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a Centaur, a Part, or a Wolf, or a Bull?
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#69. 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?
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#70. Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever
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#71. 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.
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#72. 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.
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#73. You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.
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#74. A prudent person after all can pick something
Even from an enemy.
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#75. There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.
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#76. 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.
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#78. 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.
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#80. Words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.
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#81. [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.
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#82. need a poet who can really write. Nowadays it seems like 'many are gone, and those that live are bad'.12
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#84. One bush, they say, can never hide two thieves.
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#87. These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them.
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#88. Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.
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#89. The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.
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#90. 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 ...
Aristophanes
#91. It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.
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#95. An insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud.
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#96. The wise learn many things from their enemies.
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#97. Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.
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#98. Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.
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#100. 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.
Aristophanes
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