47 quotes
Fortune is lavish with her favors, but not to be depended on. Nature on the other hand is self-sufficing, and therefore with her feebler but trustworthy [resources] she wins the greater [meed] of hope.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the [influences] that reach and impinge upon it.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep. (Another translation: "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well." Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers R.D. Hicks, Ed.)
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
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.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)
In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,—from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art.
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907)