Alexis
4th century BC Athenian comic poet
Quotes edit
- Discovery attends on every quest,
Except for renegades who shirk the toil.
Now certain men have pushed discovery
Into the sphere of heaven. Some part they know,—
How planets rise and set and wheel about,
And of the sun’s eclipse. If men have probed
Worlds far remote, can problems of this earth,
This common home to which we’re born, defy them?- Fragment of the lost comedy Achaiis, quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium, 29, 33. Translated by T. F. Higham as "The Confident Scientist" in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), no. 460, from the Greek text in T. Kock, ed. Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, Vol. II (1880), p. 309, No. 30
Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) edit
- Thomas Benfield Harbottle, Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1897)
- Once thou art wed, no longer canst thou be
Lord of thyself.- Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 34, 7.
- Of all thy blessings reckon wealth the least,
For 'tis the least secure of our possessions.- Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 37.
- Though Fortune now be smiling, it behoves
To look ahead, nor e'er to trust in Fortune.- Fabulae Incertae, Fragment 42.
- Not in vain oaths should prudent men believe,
But put their trust in actions.- Olynthia, Fragment 4.
- Our life is like to dice, which ever fall
In varying combinations; no one form
Has man's existence, but 'tis full of change.- Stobaeus, Florilegium, CV., 4.
- Most wise men were agreed that it were best
Not to be born, but if that may not be,
Then with the least delay to reach the goal.- Mandragorizomene, Fragment 1, 14.
