Theognis of Megara

"One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are few."

"We struggle onward, ignorant and blind,"

"χρήματα μὲν δαίμων καὶ παγκάκῳ ἀνδρὶ δίδωσιν, Κύρν᾽: ἀρετῆς δ᾽ ὀλίγοις ἀνδράσι μοῖρ᾽ ἕπεται."

"Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man."

"The lucky man is honored ..."

"Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue."

"Don’t wag the tail of life if it goes well,"

"πολλοί τοι πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:"

"Too many tongues have gates which fly apart Too easily, and care for many things That don’t concern them."

"Πάντων μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον μηδ' ἐσιδεῖν αὐγὰς ὀξέος ἠελίου, φύντα δ' ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι καὶ κεῖσθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον."

"ἀμφ' ἀρετῇ τρίβου, καί τοι τὰ δίκαια φίλ’ ἔστω,"

"Wine is wont to show the mind of man."

"Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you: You are so tolerant of their sins!"

"Unless the gods deceive my mind, That man is forging fetters for himself."

"The deckhands are in control, and the base have the upper hand over the noble."

"No man takes with him to Hades all his exceeding wealth."

"Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought."

"To beget and breed a man is easi er than to put into him good wits; none hath ever devised means whereby he hath made a fool wise and a bad man good. If God had given the Children of Asclepius the art of healing a man's evil nature and infatuate wit, they would receive wages much and great; and if thought could be made and put into us, the son of a good father would never become bad, because he would be persuaded by good counsel. But by teaching never shalt thou make the bad man good."

"Theognis appears as a finely formed nobleman who has fallen on bad times, with the passions of a nobleman such as his time loved, full of fatal hatred toward the upward striving masses, tossed about by a sad fate that wore him down and made him milder in many respects. He is a characteristic image of that old, ingenious somewhat spoiled and no longer firmly rooted blood nobility, placed at the boundary of an old and a new era, a distorted Janus-head, since what is past seems so beautiful and enviable, that which is coming — something that basically has an equal entitlement — seems disgusting and repulsive; a typical head for all those noble figures who represent the aristocracy prior to a popular revolution and who struggle for the existence of the class of nobles as for their individual existence."