Theophrastus quotes
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“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
-- Theophrastus -
“Remember that life holds out many pleasing deceits to us by the vanity of glory; for that when we are beginning to live, then we are dying. There is, therefore, nothing more profitless than ambition.”
-- TheophrastusSource : "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers". Book by Diogenes Laërtius, transl. by C. D. Yonge, London: H. G. Bohn, p. 196, 1853.
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“Alcmaeon was the first to define the difference between man and animals, saying that man differs from the latter in the fact that he alone has the power of understanding.”
-- Theophrastus -
“I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess.”
-- Theophrastus -
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“Slovenliness is a lazy and beastly negligence of a man's own person, whereby he becomes so sordid as to be offensive to those about him.”
-- TheophrastusSource : Jean de La Bruyère, Nicholas Rowe, Theophrastus (1713). “The characters, or, the manners of the present age”, p.41
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“An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.”
-- Theophrastus -
“The sound of the flute will cure epilepsyand sciatic gout.”
-- TheophrastusSource : Quoted in David Pickering Brewer'sTwentieth-Century Music (1994).
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“True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.”
-- Theophrastus -
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“If you are an ignorant man, you are acting wisely; but if you have had any education, you are behaving like a fool.”
-- TheophrastusSource : "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers". Book by Diogenes Laërtius, transl. by C. D. Yonge, London: H. G. Bohn, p. 196, 1853.
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“Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural.”
-- Theophrastus -
“One may define flattery as a base companionship which is most advantageous to the flatterer.”
-- Theophrastus -
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“Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.”
-- TheophrastusSource : Theophrastus (1870). “Θεοφραστου Χαρακτηρες”, p.163
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“We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology , their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.”
-- Theophrastus -
“The man of petty ambition if invited to dinner will be eager to be set next his host.”
-- Theophrastus -
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“Waste of time is the most extravagant and costly of all expenses.”
-- Theophrastus -
“Love is the affection of a mind that has nothing better to engage it.”
-- Theophrastus -
“Anaximenes ... also says that the underlying nature is one and infinite ... but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature by rarity and density. Being made finer it becomes fire; being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest come into being from these.”
-- Theophrastus
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