Lucian Quotes

Be grateful. By slaying you now, I spare you an eternity of torment.

Now that I know what I want, I don't have to hold on to it quite so much.

Realize that true happiness lies within you.

The happy think a lifetime short, but to the unhappy one night can be an eternity.

The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, by worshipping that crucified sophist and living under his laws...they receive these doctrines by tradition, without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan or trickster comes among them, he quickly acquires wealth by imposing upon these simple people.

Dancing is as old as love.

Not every story has a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth telling.

Everybody dies. Some just need a little help.

The truth is hidden from us. Even if a mere piece of luck brings us straight to it, we shall have no grounded conviction of our success; there are so many similar objects, all claiming to be the real thing.

There is no happiness without tears, no life without death. Beware! I am going to make you cry.

The world is fleeting; all things pass away; Or is it we that pass and they that stay?

How gracious are the gods in bestowing high positions; and how reluctant are they to insure them when given.

The effort only shifted me from the frying-pan into the fire.

The industry needs transforming. It’s for others to decide whether they want to get stuck in the past or whether they want to come on the journey.

The lips are closed, for the dancer has plenty of other voices at his service.

Poverty persuades a man to do and suffer everything that he may escape from it.

Death is a mercy, and I have enough mercy to go around.

The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth.

The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really.

I was still more concerned (a preference which you may be far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him.

I'll be reading books until the next challenger arrives. That will calm my nerves, so that I may deal with all situations without panicking.

Wise is the person at either end. Who can in due measure spare as well as spend.

The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

Avarice is a cursed vice: offer a man enough gold, and he will part with his own small hoard of food, however great his hunger.

The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred.

It is not lawful or proper for you to know everything.

The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid

For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own: if a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his sole rule and unerring guide is this - to think not of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.