Theognis

Theognis (flourished around c. 545 BC) was a Greek elegiac poet. He lived in Megara, flourished in the second half of the 6th century BC, but lost his possessions during a revolution at Megara, in which the democrats overpowered the aristocrats, to which party he belonged. Thereafter, he was compelled to live in exile, and found solace in the writing of poetry full of a practical and prudential wisdom, bitterly biased against democracy, and tinged with pessimism.

Wisdom & Quotes

• More haste, less speed.

- fragment

• Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.

- Elegies

• Best of all for mortal beings is never to have been born at all

Nor ever to have set eyes on the bright light of the sun
But, since he is born, a man should make utmost haste through the gates of Death
And then repose, the earth piled into a mound round himself.

• Whatever fate ordains, danger or hurt, or death predetermined, nothing can avert.
• No man takes with him to Hades all his exceeding wealth.
• Two demons of drink beset wretched mortals, enfeebling thirst and harsh drunkenness. I'll steer a middle course between them and you won't persuade me either not to drink or to drink too much.
• Give me a man who understands my moods, who brother-like, understands my grouchiness. If you will give your mind to what I say, dear friend, you will remember me one day.
• I will blame no enemy that is a good man, nor yet praise a friend that is bad.
• Easier to make bad out of good than good out of bad.

Don't try to teach me. I am too old to learn.

• I knew before, but I know better now, that there's no gratitude in the baser sort.
• There is a certain exquisite pleasure in the wavering of the balance.
• We look for rams and stallions of fine stock, and one believes that good will come from good; yet a man minds not to wed the lewd daughter of an evil sire. Marvel not then, that the stock of our folk is tarnished; for the good now mingles with the base.
• Many in truth are your comrades when there's food and drink, but not so many when the enterprise is serious.
• This is excellence, this the best human prize and the fairest for a man to win. This is a common benefit for the state and all the people, whenever a man with firm stance holds his ground among the front ranks.

- On war

• Enjoy your youth, my dear heart: soon it will be the turn of other men, and I'll be dead and become dark earth.
• It is easier to beget and rear a man than to put good sense in him. No one has yet devised a means whereby one has made the fool wise and a noble man out of one who is base.
• O wretched poverty, why do you delay to leave me and go to another man? Don't be attached to me against my will, but go, visit another house, and don't always share this miserable life with me.
• Don't show affection for me in your words but keep your mind and heart elsewhere, if you love me and the mind within you is loyal. Either love me sincerely or renounce me, hate me and quarrel openly
• What is beautiful is loved, and what is not is unloved.
• Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man.
• We struggle onward, ignorant and blind,

For a result unknown and undesign’d;
Avoiding seeming ills, misunderstood,
Embracing evil as a seeming good.

• Even to a wicked man a divinity gives wealth, Cyrus, but to few men comes the gift of excellence.
• The lucky man is honored ...

But earnest striving wins no praise at all.

• The deckhands are in control, and the base have the upper hand over the noble.
• Don’t wag the tail of life if it goes well,

But leave in undisturbed. If it should go
Badly, rock it until it straightens up.

• Many bad men are rich, many good men are poor. But we will not exchange wealth for virtue along with them. One man has money now, another has money at another time. Money goes around, whereas virtue endures.
• Spend time on excellence, and love the right,

And don’t let shameful profit master you.

• Unless the gods deceive my mind,

That man is forging fetters for himself.

Heraclitus