Philosophers From Greece

"Ἐπιδειξαμένου γὰρ αὐτῷ τοῦ Μυρρινουσίου Φαίδρου λόγον ὑπὸ Λυσίου τοῦ Κεφάλου συγγεγραμμένον ἐρωτικόν, οὐκ ἔφη θαυμάζειν, πλῆρες τὸ στῆθος ἔχων ὥσπερ ἀγγεῖον ἀλλοτρίων ναμάτων, ἤ που Σαπφοῦς τῆς καλῆς (οὕτω γὰρ αὐτὴν ὀνομάζων χαίρει διὰ τὴν ὥραν τῶν μελῶν, καίτοι μικρὰν οὖσαν καὶ μέλαιναν), ἢ Ἀνακρέοντος, φησίν, τοῦ σοφοῦ."

"‘Yet some few of such investigations we have in the five first propositions of Euclid’s thirteenth book … seems to be the work of Theo, […] rather than of Euclid himself.’"

"that sectors in equal circles are to one another as the angles on which they stand has been proved by me in my edition of the Elements..."

"All our Greek texts of the Elements up to a century ago…purport in their titles to be either ‘from the edition of Theon’…or ‘from the lectures of Theon... [Greek commentaries] commonly speak of the writer of the Elements instead of using his name."

"Ἐσμὲν γὰρ οὖν... Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, ὡς ἥ τε φωνὴ καὶ ἡ πάτριος παιδεία μαρτυρεῖ."

"Νυκτερινή, δίκερως, φιλοπάννυχε, φαῖνε, Σελήνη, φαῖνε, δι᾽ εὐτρήτων βαλλομένη θυρίδων αὔγαζε χρυσέην Καλλίστιον ἐς τὰ φιλεύντων ἔργα κατοπτεύειν οὐ φθόνος ἀθανάτῃ. ὀλβίζεις καὶ τήνδε καὶ ἡμέας, οἶδα, Σελήνη: καὶ γὰρ σὴν ψυχὴν ἔφλεγεν Ἐνδυμίων."

"In preeminence, the cause of all that is intelligible is not anything intelligible."

"It is cause of all;"

"In preeminence, the cause of all that is sensible is not anything sensible."

"The indefiniteness beyond being"

"Pleasure is like a rough file smeared with oil, which when the cat licks it up, it also licks with it the blood of its own tongue."

"Do not by any means allow yourself to open both ears to the slanderers and to draw your conclusions and decisions on the basis of what they alone have to say, and thereby judge the case in absentia without the presence of the person slandered to defend himself."

"Know the right moment."

"Know thyself."

"Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage."

"Rule will show the man."

"Nothing too much."

"Do not speak ill of the dead."

"Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only."

"Most people, both Christian and non-Christian, saw Hypatia’s killing as a brutal, unprovoked murder that exploded out of a toxic set of circumstances for which Hypatia bore little responsibility."

"Hypatia was a University lecturer denounced by Church dignitaries and torn to pieces by Christians. Such will probably be the fate of this book: therefore it bears her name. What I have written here I believe and shall not retract or change for similar episcopal denunciations."

"In speech articulate and logical, in her actions prudent and public-spirited. The city gave her suitable welcome and accorded her special respect."

"Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that appears to be his nature. … Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful. Neither do their customers know … unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul."

"Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, but should apply all these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. ... Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics?"

"Wer nicht um der Philosophie willen philosophiert, sondern die Philosophie als Mittel braucht, ist ein Sophist."

"To offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom."

"It is what a man has thought out directly for himself that alone has true value. Thinkers may be classed as follows: those who, in the first place, think for themselves, and those who think directly for others. The former thinkers are the genuine, they think for themselves in both senses of the word; they are the true philosophers; they alone are in earnest. Moreover, the enjoyment and happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The others are the sophists; they wish to seem, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get from other people; their earnestness consists in this."

"Esse aliquam cognatam tristitiae voluptatem [...]."

"Mortale est omne mortalium bonum."

"Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi omnisque aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me adspirare non posses."

"Alfred Körte, Metrodori epicurei fragmenta, Leipzig, Teubner, 1890."

"[...] The source of happiness in ourselves [is] greater than that which arises from objects."

"Remember, O Menestratus, that, being a mortal endowed with a circumscribed life, thou hast in thy soul ascended, till thou hast seen endless time, and the infinity of things; and what is to be, and what has been."

"As the old confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony."

"The Judgment and the Reward according to the righteous scales of God... will be Light to those whose mind is purified (that is, God — seen and known) proportionate to their degree of purity, which we call the Kingdom of heaven; but to those who suffer from blindness of their ruling faculty, darkness, that is estrangement from God, proportionate to their blindness here."

"I myself hold my friend the great Basil in high regard for his seriousness of character and the maturity and prudence of his discourse."

"I know of three classes among the saved; the slaves, the hired servants, the sons. If you are a slave, be afraid of the whip; if you are a hired servant, look only to receive your hire; if you are more than this, a son, revere Him as a Father, and work that which is good, because it is good to obey a Father; and even though no reward should come of it for you, this is itself a reward, that you please your Father."

"They who have lost the Gift [of baptism] through ignorance or tyranny... will be neither glorified nor punished by the righteous Judge, as unsealed and yet not wicked, but persons who have suffered rather than done wrong. For not every one who is not bad enough to be punished is good enough to be honoured; just as not every one who is not good enough to be honoured is bad enough to be punished."

"He will come again with His glorious Presence to judge the quick and the dead; no longer flesh, nor yet without a body, according to the laws which He alone knows of a more godlike body."

"Since we are double-made, I mean of body and soul, and the one part is visible, the other invisible, so the cleansing also is twofold, by water and the spirit; the one received visibly in the body, the other concurring with it invisibly and apart from the body; the one typical, the other real and cleansing the depths."

"It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe."

"I offer this gift to my God, I dedicate this gift to Him. Only this remains to me as my treasure. I gave up everything else at the command of the Spirit. I gave all that I had to obtain the pearl of great price. Only in words do I master it, as a servant of the Word. I would never intentionally wish to disdain this wealth. I esteem it, I set value by it, I am comforted by it more than others are comforted by all the treasures of the world. It is the companion of all my life, a good counselor and converser; a guide on the way to Heaven and a fervent co-ascetic."

"I am an organ of the Lord, and sweetly... do I glorify the King, all atremble before Him."

"Philosophize about the world or worlds; about matter; about soul; about natures endowed with reason, good or bad; about resurrection, about judgment, about reward, or the Sufferings of Christ. For in these subjects to hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is not dangerous."

"Let me be as the Prophet Jonah! I was responsible for the storm, but I would sacrifice myself for the salvation of the ship. Seize me and throw me... I was not happy when I ascended the throne, and gladly would I descend it."

"For my sake He was called a curse, who destroyed my curse (Gal 3:13); and sin, who taketh away the sin of the world (2 Cor 5:21)... Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the expression, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ (Mat 27:46) It was not He who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead... He was in His own Person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the Sufferings of Him Who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved."

"It was not Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, alone, who taught that the Universe evolves, and its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into that of water, etc. Heraclitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fire is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years b.c.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all these philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of none was complete."

"He says that the stars do not move under the earth as others have supposed, but around it, as a felt cap turns around our head. The sun is hidden not because it is under the earth but because it is covered by the higher parts of the earth and on account of the greater distance it comes to be from us. Because of their distance the stars do not give heat."

"He [Anaximander] left Anaximenes as his disciple and successor, who attributed all the causes of things to infinite air, and did not deny that there were gods, or pass over them in silence; yet he believed not that air was made by them, but that they arose from air."

"οἷον ἡ ψυχή ἡ ἡμετέρα ἀὴρ οὖσα συγκρατεῖ ἡμᾶς, καὶ ὅλον τὸν κόσμον πνεῦμα καὶ ἀὴρ περιέχει"