Solon Quotes - Page 2

Satiety comes of riches and contumaciousness of satiety.

If through your vices you afflicted are, Lay not the blame of your distress on God; You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards, So now you groan 'neath slavery's heavy rod.

Each day grow older, and learn something new.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.

What thou seest, speak of with caution.

Speech is the mirror of action.

Learn to obey before you command.

Pure chastity is beauty to our souls, grace to our bodies, and peace to our desires.

He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest.

No fool can be silent at a feast.

Chide a friend in private and praise him in public.

Rule, after you have first learned to submit to rule.

If things are going well, religion and legislation are beneficial; if not, they are of no avail.

Consider your honour, as a gentleman, of more weight than an oath.

Say nothing but good of the dead.

No more good must be attempted than the nation can bear

Men keep their agreements when it is an advantage to both parties not to break them; and I shall so frame my laws that it will be evident to the Athenians that it will be for their interest to observe them.

For often evil men are rich, and good men poor; But we will not exchange with them Our virtue for their wealth since one abides always, While riches change their owners every day.

Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.

True blessedness consisteth in a good life and a happy death.

Poets tell many lies.

As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.

Men keep agreements when it is to the advantage of neither to break them.

That city in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.

To make an empire durable, the magistrates must obey the laws and the people the magistrates.