Why a quotation at all
The footer carries one quotation per calendar day, chosen from a fixed collection rather than pulled from an uncontrolled source. It stays the same all day and is the same for every visitor, so it is a small daily prompt rather than a slot machine.
They are drawn mostly from Greek and Roman moral philosophy, because the gap between seeming and being is not a new problem. Epictetus was writing about appearance and reality roughly nineteen centuries before anyone had to disclose an AI-generated product photograph.
A note on translations
Ancient texts are in the public domain. Modern translations are not. Every translation used here is itself out of copyright, and the translator and year are listed against each entry below. Where wording has been lightly modernised for readability, the entry says so.
This matters for a practical reason as well as a legal one: translations differ, sometimes substantially. A line that reads crisply in one English version may be far more hedged in another. Where a quotation is widely circulated but its source is uncertain, it is marked as attributed or disputed rather than given a false citation. Several very famous lines are in that category.
The collection
Entries are listed alphabetically by author. The collection rotates automatically, so it grows without changing how the feature works.
| Quotation | Author | Work and passage | Translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Be rather than seem.” | Aeschylus | Seven Against Thebes l. 592 | Morshead, 1881 |
| “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” | Aristotle | attributed | traditional |
| “The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently.” | Aristotle | Nicomachean Ethics III.7 | Ross, 1908 |
| “In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them.” | Aristotle | Politics VI.2 | Jowett, 1885 |
| “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking.” | Aristotle | Nicomachean Ethics I.5 | Ross, 1908 |
| “The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.” | Cicero | On Divination II.54 | Yonge, 1853 |
| “What is honourable is also what is useful; and what is useful is also honourable.” | Cicero | On Duties III.11 | Miller, 1913 |
| “You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.” | Epictetus | Enchiridion I | Carter, 1758 |
| “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” | Epictetus | Discourses III.23 | Long, 1862 |
| “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.” | Epictetus | Enchiridion V | Carter, 1758 |
| “Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be.” | Epictetus | Discourses I.27 | Long, 1862 |
| “Character is destiny.” | Heraclitus | Fragments B119 | Burnet, 1892 |
| “Much learning does not teach understanding.” | Heraclitus | Fragments B40 | Burnet, 1892 |
| “Nature loves to hide.” | Heraclitus | Fragments B123 | Burnet, 1892 |
| “Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men, if they have souls that do not understand their language.” | Heraclitus | Fragments B107 | Burnet, 1892 |
| “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.” | Japanese proverb | traditional | traditional |
| “Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.” | La Rochefoucauld | Maxims 421 | Bund and Friswell, 1871 |
| “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” | La Rochefoucauld | Maxims 119 | Bund and Friswell, 1871 |
| “Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.” | La Rochefoucauld | Maxims 218 | Bund and Friswell, 1871 |
| “It is easier to appear worthy of a position one does not hold, than of the office which one fills.” | La Rochefoucauld | Maxims 164 | Bund and Friswell, 1871 |
| “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations X.16 | Long, 1862 |
| “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations IV.3 | Long, 1862 |
| “Look beneath the surface: let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations VI.3 | Long, 1862 |
| “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations III.11 | Long, 1862 |
| “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations IV.18 | Long, 1862 |
| “Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations IV.17 | Long, 1862 |
| “Every man is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” | Mark Twain | Notebook 1897 | public domain |
| “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” | Mark Twain | attributed | traditional |
| “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.” | Montaigne | Essays I.32 | Cotton, 1685 |
| “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” | Plato | attributed | traditional |
| “He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.” | Plato | attributed | traditional |
| “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” | Plato | The Republic II.377b | Jowett, 1871 |
| “Trust, like the soul, never returns once it is gone.” | Publilius Syrus | Sentences | Lyman, 1856 |
| “A good reputation is more valuable than money.” | Publilius Syrus | Sentences | Lyman, 1856 |
| “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” | Seneca | Letters to Lucilius II | Gummere, 1917 |
| “No man was ever wise by chance.” | Seneca | Letters to Lucilius LXXVI | Gummere, 1920 |
| “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” | Seneca | Letters to Lucilius XIII | Gummere, 1917 |
| “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” | Seneca | attributed | traditional |
| “Let no man think he has lived long because he has grey hairs and wrinkles.” | Seneca | On the Shortness of Life VII | Basore, 1932 |
| “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.” | Seneca | On Anger II.29 | Stewart, 1900 |
| “Time discovers truth.” | Seneca | On Anger II.22 | Stewart, 1900 |
| “I know that I know nothing.” | Socrates | via Plato, Apology 21d | Jowett, 1871 |
| “The unexamined life is not worth living.” | Socrates | via Plato, Apology 38a | Jowett, 1871 |
| “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” | attributed to Mark Twain | disputed attribution | traditional |