The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
AristophanesWeak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.
AristophanesI saw a cavalry captain buy vegetable soup on horseback. He carried the whole mess home in his helmet.
AristophanesMeton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .
AristophanesLysistrata: Oh, Calonicรฉ, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly...Calonicรฉ: And they are quite right, upon my word!Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.Calonicรฉ: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.
Aristophanes