In the 5th century AD, a father in the Balkan city of Stobi was educating his son. Stobaeus (as we now call him, “the man from Stobi”) compiled quotes from Greek texts to use as a teaching tool, drawing especially on the plays of ancient Athens, many of which later became extinct. The passages he gathered, the last remains of the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, remind us that our lives are beset by troubles, yet happiness remains within our grasp. The ethical wisdom of classical Greece is preserved for all time in these quotes, expressed in lines of elegant, metrical verse.
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Our life is like wine: When there’s only a little left,
it turns to vinegar.
–Antiphanes
Its name is “life” but really it’s toil and pain.
–Euripides
The finest thing is being just by nature;
the best, living free from illness; the most pleasant,
getting what one desires day by day.
–Sophocles, Creusa
Living’s a fine thing, provided one learns how to do it.
–Anonymous
I call one kind of person most fortunate,
the kind who has, without suffering, beheld
these lofty things, then gone back whence he came:
the sun that’s shared by all, stars, water, clouds,
and fire. You’ll have these always before your eyes
if you live a hundred years or very few,
and you’ll never see anything lovelier than these.
–Menander, The Supposititious Child
Who knows if being alive is really dying
And dying is thought to be living, down below ground?
–Euripides, Ino
The great beginning of all human woes
is good things that are too good.
–Alexis, The Tarentines
We humans have many ills; for some people,
ills are just now abating, for others, arriving.
One cycle governs both the fruits of the earth
and human generations: Life’s growing for some,
for others it wanes and is harvested back in.
–Euripides, Ino
He lived a luxurious life, with the result
that he wouldn’t live luxuriously very long.
–Menander
We live not how we want but how we can.
–Menander, The Andrian Woman
What should a mortal do, I ask of you,
but live life day by day, while gaining pleasure,
as long as resources last?
–Philetaerus
It’s good that the god gives cases in point, to show
to those with sense that the life we live is a loan
and, when it pleases the gods, that loaned life
can easily be recalled from any of us.
–Anonymous
(Quoting from memory) “There’s nobody who’s happy in all things.”
By Athena, my dearest Euripides,
you’ve put all life compactly in one line.
–Nicostratus
Wife, this light of the sun is a lovely thing,
and lovely it is to gaze on the becalmed sea,
the earth blooming in spring and the richness of water;
many beautiful things might I praise with my words;
but nothing’s as brilliant or beautiful to behold
as to glimpse the light of newborn babes in the house.
–Euripides, Danae
The yearnings we have in our lives are of all sorts:
One person longs to have distinction of birth;
another cares little for that but rather wants
to be known as the patriarch of his house’s wealth;
a third is pleased to use bad, reckless words
to persuade those nearby, though speaking nothing sound;
still others seek shameful gain in place of what’s noble.
In such ways human life can veer off course.
–Euripides, Rhadamanthus
So you’ve slipped up; you’re human. In the course of life
it’s a miracle if one’s lucky the whole way through.
–Baton, The Man from Aetolia
The entire human condition’s completely insane.
We who are living just happen to be on reprieve,
as though we were attending some festival,
released for a time from darkness and from death,
to take amusement and enjoy this light
we see around us. Those who most laugh and drink
during the time they’re released, and also grab hold
of Aphrodite, or of some banquet meal,
have the most fun at the feast—then they head home.
–Alexis, The Tarentines
Monostichs
Hope helps us navigate the voyage of life.
How sweet this life—if Fortune bears no grudge.
One can’t say, while one lives, “It won’t happen to me.”
None of us lives the life we chose in advance.
Life’s serious side gets a laugh from the wise.
Our life is a dip of the scales.
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From Since You’re Mortal... Used with the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton and Company. Copyright © 2026 by James Romm
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