Simonides > Quotes

“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
― Simonides

“Dancing is silent poetry.”
― Simonides

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.”
― Simonides

“Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
― Simonides

“O Stranger, send the news home to the people of Sparta that here we
Are laid to rest: the commands they gave us have been obeyed.

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

[Epitaph of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae]”
― Simonides

“Not even the gods fight against necessity.”
― Simonides

“So I shall never waste my life-span in a vain useless hope, seeking what cannot be, a flawless man among us all who feed on the fruits of the broad earth. If I find him, I will bring you news.
But I praise and love every man who does nothing base from free will. Against necessity, even gods do not fight.”
― Simonides

“The Athenians, front-fighters of the Greeks, at Marathon destroyed the power of the gold-bearing Medes.”
― Simonides

“Any man is good when life treats him well, and bad when it treats him badly.”
― Simonides

“One thousand years, ten thousand years
are but a tiny dot,
the smallest segment of a point,
an invisible hair.”
― Simonides

“Stranger, go back to Sparta and tell our people
that we who were slain obeyed the code.”
― Simonides

“We are all debts owed to death.”
― Simonides

“Be sure, stranger, to let the Spartans know
that we lie here obedient to their command.”
― Simonides

“All these victors from the Tyrrhenian wars
were on their way to Apollo at Delphi
with their first plunder
when they found, their grave
on one night, in one ship, in one deep sea.”
― Simonides

“Through their extraordinary courage, the wide
farmlands of Tegea
have not shot fire and smoke into the sky.
For they made their choice
to leave their children in a country green
and sweet with freedom,
and died for this in the wild ranks of battle.”
― Simonides

“Without the gods
a man or city can do nothing.
Only God knows everything, and man
suffers for what he does.

There is no evil
man may not expect, and soon
God wipes away the few things
he may have done.”
― Simonides

“With mindless bravura Ares washed his long sleek arrowheads
in the crimson waters within their chests,
and dust now lies not on the living flesh
of javeliners,
but on the vivid remnants of lifeless bodies.”
― Simonides

“When her fate rested on the razor's edge,
we gave away our lives to save all Greece.”
― Simonides

“If you are a simple mortal, do not speak
of tomorrow or how long this man may be
among the happy, for change comes suddenly
like the shifting flight of a dragonfly.”
― Simonides

“A tilting sea and thundering winds
tossed the carved chest and filled Danaë
with terror; she cried
and placed her arm lovingly around
Perseus saying: 'My child, I suffer
and yet your heart is calm; you sleep
profoundly in the blue dark of night
and shine in our gloomy bronze-ribbed boat.
Don't think of the heaving saltwave
that seeps in through airholes and drenches
your hair, nor of the clamoring gale;
but lying in our seaviolet blanket
keep your lovely body close to mine.
If you knew the horror of our plight,
your gentle ears would hear my words.
But sleep, my son, and let
the ocean sleep and our great troubles end.
I ask you, father Zeus,
rescue us from our fate; and should
my words seem too severe, I beg you please
remember where we are, and forgive
my prayer.”
― Simonides

“I who lie here, Brotachos of Gortyn, was born in Krete,
and I did not come here for death but weighty business.”
― Simonides

“This is the tomb of the famous Megistias, slain by
the Persians near the Spercheios River,
a seer who even when aware that death was near
would not desert his Spartan kings.”
― Simonides

“All these victors from the Tyrrhenian wars
we're on their way to Apollo at Delph
with their first plunder
when they found, their grave
on one night, in one ship, in one deep sea.”
― Simonides