Democritus Quotes

Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.

Poor mind, from the senses you take your arguments, and then want to defeat them? Your victory is your defeat.

The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures. Some men are masters of cities, but are enslaved to women.

Reason is often a more powerful persuader than gold.

Nothing exists but atoms and the void.

If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.

Happiness does not reside in strength or money; it lies in rightness and many-sidedness.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Many much-learned men have no intelligence.

Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention; but in reality atoms and the void alone exist

Nature . . . has buried truth deep in the bottom of the sea.

Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

Some men are masters of cities, but are enslaved to women.

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

Life unexamined, is not worth living.

Men should strive to think much and know little.

Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

To speak but little becomes a woman; and she is best adorned who is in plain attire.

One should practice much sense, not much learning.

If you would know contentment, let your deeds be few.

Sexual intercourse is a slight attack of apoplexy.

Magnanimity consists in enduring tactlessness with mildness.

Tis hard to fight with anger but the prudent man keeps it under control.

More men have become great through practice than by nature.

The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.

To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth.

Word is a shadow of a deed.

The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures.

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms and a void.

Fortune provides a man's table with luxuries, virtue with only a frugal meal.

The whole Earth is at the hand of the wise man, since the fatherland of an elevated soul is the Universe.

Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.

Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.

Envy creates the beginning of strife.

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.

I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.

Virtue isn't not wronging others but not wishing to wrong others.

The word is the shadow of the deed.

The man enslaved to wealth can never be honest.

I am the most travelled of all my contemporaries; I have extended my field of enquiry wider than anybody else, I have seen more countries and climes, and have heard more speeches of learned men. No one has surpassed me in the composition of lines, according to demonstration, not even the Egyptian knotters of ropes, or geometers.

Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets.

These differences, they say, are three: shape, arrangement, and position; because they hold that what is differs only in contour, inter-contact, inclination.

The sweetest things become the most bitter by excess.