Aristophanes Quotes

89 Sourced Quotes

Who knows whether living is dying, and breathing Is eating, and sleeping is a wool blanket?

Aristophanes
'Tis the Whirlwind, that has driven out Zeus and is King now.

Aristophanes
It is so that you may know only those who nourish you

Aristophanes
Somewhere, what with all these clouds, and all this air, There must be a rare name, somewhere... How do you like "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land"?

Aristophanes
Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; [...] I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all. [...]
Blepyrus: But who will till the soil?
Praxagora: The slaves.

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

Aristophanes
On the nightingale:
Lord Zeus, listen to the little bird's voice; he has filled the whole thicket with honeyed song.

Aristophanes
Under every stone lurks a politician.

Aristophanes
There's nothing worse in the world than shameless woman—save some other woman.

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

Aristophanes
I am amazed that anyone who has made a fortune should send for his friends.

Aristophanes
This Second Logic then, I mean the Worse one,
They teach to talk unjustly, and—prevail.

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

Aristophanes
O women, if we would compel the men to bow to Peace, [...] We must refrain from every depth of love.... Why do you turn your backs? Where are you going? Why do you bite your lips and shake your heads? Why are your faces blanched? Why do you weep?

Aristophanes
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 love of wine is a good man's failing.

Aristophanes
[Choir of] Men: O botheration take you all! How you cajole and flatter.
A hell it is to live with you; to live without, a hell.

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

Aristophanes
Man is naturally deceitful ever, in every way!

Aristophanes
[We] must look beneath every stone, lest it conceal some orator ready to sting us.

Aristophanes
Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.

Aristophanes
Strepsiades: But come, by the Earth, is not Zeus, the Olympian, a god?
Socrates: What Zeus? Do not trifle. There is no Zeus.

Aristophanes
My wind exploded like a thunder-clap... Iaso blushed a rosy red And Panacea turned away her head Holding her nose: my wind's not frankincense.

Aristophanes
You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.

Aristophanes
A savage-creating stubborn-pulling fellow, Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech, Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.

Aristophanes