Top 100 Quotes About Aristophanes
#1. The Graces sought some holy ground,
Whose sight should ever please;
And in their search the soul they found
Of Aristophanes.
Plato
#2. There are dozens of ways of failing to make money. It is one thing to fail to make money because your single talent happens to be a flair amounting to genius for translating the plays of Aristophanes. It is quite another thing to fail to make money because you are black, or a child, or a woman.
Margaret Halsey
#3. Atheism or similar charges was not unusual among intellectuals, nor condemned by the masses. The prize-winning plays of Aristophanes were not merely atheist, but made fun of the gods and their prophets and oracles.
Benjamin Jowett
#4. There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.
Harold Bloom
#5. It is difficult to be funny and great at the same time. Aristophanes and Moliere and Mark Twain must sit below Aristotle and Bossuet and Emerson.
Stephen Leacock
#6. Because we're soul mates, just like Aristophanes described- one soul in two bodies. You're my missing half. You're my bashert.
Sylvain Reynard
#7. Similarly the animal psychologist, Aristophanes, accidentally discovered the world's first joke while inquiring into the hitherto mysterious motivations of pathway-traversing fowl.
George Pendle
#8. The Ghost of Sir Felix Finch whines, "But it's been done a hundred times before!"
as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What, not the How!
David Mitchell
#9. Aristophanes says we were all four-legged creatures to start, some the same sex, but most half man and half woman. Zeus was afraid us humans would get too powerful so he sliced us right down the middle, and everybody spends their life looking for the matching piece.
Scott Turow
#10. Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.
Tina Fey
#12. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
Aristophanes
#13. To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.
Aristophanes
#14. 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
#15. [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
#16. Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.
Aristophanes
#17. Even from enemies much can be learned by the intelligent,
More in fact than from our friends.
Aristophanes
#19. One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.
Aristophanes
#20. 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
#21. The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.
Aristophanes
#22. 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
#23. Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.
Aristophanes
#24. Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.
Aristophanes
#25. 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
#26. I must think of something foolproof for a fool.
Aristophanes
#29. Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
Aristophanes
#30. Lysistrata: To seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.
Aristophanes
#31. What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!
Aristophanes
#32. Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
Aristophanes
#33. Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.
Aristophanes
#34. A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.
Aristophanes
#35. 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
#37. 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.
Aristophanes
#40. 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.
Aristophanes
#41. 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
#42. If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.
Aristophanes
#44. The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.
Aristophanes
#45. Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.
Aristophanes
#46. I was the first to make it understood
that reason could undermine the just premises of the good.
Aristophanes
#47. To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.
Aristophanes
#48. You will never make the crab walk straight.
Aristophanes
#50. You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.
Aristophanes
#52. Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .
Aristophanes
#53. Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master, At which the audience never fail to laugh?
Aristophanes
#54. There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!
Aristophanes
#55. Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.
Aristophanes
#56. Politics, these days, is no occupation
for an educated man, a man of character.
Ignorance and total lousiness are better.
Aristophanes
#57. It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.
Aristophanes
#58. 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.
Aristophanes
#59. Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
Aristophanes
#60. Love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.
Aristophanes
#62. It is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy.
Aristophanes
#63. 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.
Aristophanes
#64. 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
#65. How can I study from below, that which is above?
Aristophanes
#66. Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!
Aristophanes
#67. 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.
Aristophanes
#68. I saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet.
Aristophanes
#70. Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways, are the children of Men.
Aristophanes
#71. 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?
Aristophanes
#72. Thou shouldst not decide until thou hast heard what both have to say.
Aristophanes
#74. To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.
Aristophanes
#75. Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.
Aristophanes
#76. You can't have anything else to say: you've poured out every drop of what you know.
Aristophanes
#78. 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.
Aristophanes
#79. That man is sharp who can say what he wants in a minimum of words.
Aristophanes
#80. When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.
Aristophanes
#81. A man should be able to stand up under any disaster for his country's good.
Aristophanes
#82. Chorus of old men: How true the saying: 'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em.
Aristophanes
#83. 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.
Aristophanes
#85. First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.
Aristophanes
#86. Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.
Aristophanes
#87. 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.
Aristophanes
#88. 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.
Aristophanes
#90. No man is really honest; none of us is above the influence of gain.
Aristophanes
#91. Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a Centaur, a Part, or a Wolf, or a Bull?
Aristophanes
#92. 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?
Aristophanes
#93. Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is forever
Aristophanes
#94. 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.
Aristophanes
#95. 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.
Aristophanes
#96. You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.
Aristophanes
#97. A prudent person after all can pick something
Even from an enemy.
Aristophanes
#98. There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.
Aristophanes
#99. 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.
Aristophanes
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