Greek comic dramatist (450 B.C. - 388 B.C.)
A truce to idle phrases!
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
Sir, sir what good are words? They are of no avail with wild beasts of this sort. Don't you know how they have just washed us down--and with no very fragrant soap!
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
It often happens that less depends upon the valor of an army than the skill of the leader.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!
ARISTOPHANES
The Acharnians
There's no art where there's no fee.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
A slave is but half a man.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
An actor should refine public taste.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
And do you too grunt with joy and follow your mother, my little pigs?
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
An insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud.
ARISTOPHANES
The Knights
To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
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.
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
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.
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
Do not take a blind guide.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
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
Women at the Thesmophoria
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.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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.
ARISTOPHANES
attributed, Day's Collacon
You can't have anything else to say: you've poured out every drop of what you know.
ARISTOPHANES
Women at the Thesmophoria