“It is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy.”

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

First listen, my friend, and then you may shriek and bluster.

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.

A man should be able to stand up under any disaster for his country’s good.

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

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

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

To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high.

Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.

Do not take a blind guide.

Open your mind before your mouth.

You 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.

A slave is but half a man.

What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

An ancient tradition declares that every idiot blunder we pass into law will sooner or later redound to Athens’ profit.

Evil events from evil causes spring, And what you suffer flows from what you’ve done.