Elli Pensa

“All learning is useful, all the sciences are curious, all the arts are beautiful; but the most useful, most curious and most beautiful is perfect knowledge and perfect government of oneself.”
― Frances Wright

“Once when he [Demonax, a supposed Cynic sage] came upon two uncouth philosophers inquiring and wrangling with one another--one of them putting absurd questions, the other answering perfectly irrelevantly--he said "Don't you think, my friends, that one of these guys is milking a he-goat and the other putting a sieve underneath it?”
― Lucian of Samosata, The Works of Lucian of Samosata

“Alexander once made himself supremely ridiculous. Coming across Epicurus's Principal Doctrines, the most admirable of his books, as you know, with its terse presentment of his wise conclusions, he brought it into the middle of the marketplace, there burned it on a figwood fire for the sins of its author, and cast its ashes into the sea. He issued an oracle on the occasion:

“The dotard's doctrines to the flames be given.”

The fellow had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquility, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and insubordinate desires, of the judgment and candor that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.”
― Lucian of Samosata

“Human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear and hope, and that any one who can make these serve his ends may be sure of rapid fortune.”
― Lucian of Samosata