Best Spartan Quotes & Sayings

the Spartan right fall upon the defenders of Antirhion, not in frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel with the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt. — Steven Pressfield

He was built like a Spartan (the Gerard Butler kind, Nom). — Adrianne Brooks

I didn't know what would take my mind off the sexy Spartan, except for maybe a total lobotomy. — Jennifer Estep

Owen Owens Field embodies the name of the team that calls it home. It's Spartan to the core. — Neil Hayes

Cuba was neo-colony of the United States and still suffers a blockade. So, therefore, the consumer goods and so forth, we don't have here, especially when you leave the city areas it's a spartan life. But what is impressive about it is what is coming about. It's the future that all these socialists look forward to. — Huey Newton

If he was not exactly a Spartan, he was, you might say, spartanatical. Things happened to you; they were good,or they were bad - and that was the truth about everything. — A.E. Coppard

Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism. — Margaret Sanger

For if the talent or individuality is there, it should be expressed. If it doesn't find its way out into the air, it can be turned inward and gnaw like the fox at the Spartan boy's belly. — Shirley Maclaine

At the age of about eight years, if he is a boy, she turns him over to his father for more Spartan training. — Charles Eastman

we end up stronger architects in the end. Like Spartan warriors. — R.S. Grey

A journey is not a cure. It brings an illusion, only, of change, and becomes at best a spartan comfort — Colin Thubron

Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae! — Lord Byron

The Spartan statesman Lycurgus, seven hundred years ago, is said to have observed: When falls on man the anger of the gods, First from his mind they banish understanding. Such was to be the fate of Caesar. I am sure Cicero was correct: he had gone mad. His success had made him vain, and his vanity had devoured his reason. — Robert Harris

Political writers argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by the things they see they judge of things very different which they have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

First of all, you don't want me to get too hungry. Ever. I'm an ever worse bastard than normal and having starved for centuries, I'm not about to deprive myself again when I don't have to. Second, let me tell you something about your 'friends.' Deimos held me down while I was branded and then took me to the human realm where I was left with nothing. No clothes, no money. Not a damn thing to call my own. Hence the aforementioned starvation. A hundred years later, M'Ordant dumped my inside a Spartan prison camp and told the commander I was a traitor to their people. You don't really want to know what the Spartans did to people they thought betrayed them. D'Alerian had me put inside a Turkish prison in the fifteenth century where I was impaled after being tortured for three weeks. So you'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them right now. At least no one's shoving a sharp spike up their asses. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Only Spartan women give birth to real men. — Gorgo, Queen Of Sparta

Yes, Hart, I went commando to a diplomatic function," Harry said, and then motioned to his body. "And now, as you can see, I'm going Spartan so a midget can whack me with a stick." He bent and picked up his Bongka. "Honestly, Hart. Help me out here. Focus a little. — John Scalzi

From age eleven to age sixteen I lived a spartan life without the usual adolescent uncertainty. I wanted to be the best swimmer in the world, and there was nothing else. — Diana Nyad

Yes, but if you cannot clear your name, what then are we to do?" she demanded.
"Forget we ever met!" said Ludovic with a groan.
This Spartan resolve did not commend itself to Eustacie at all. Two large tears sparkled on the ends of her eyelashes, and she said in a very forlorn voice; "But me, I have a memory of the very longest! — Georgette Heyer

Spartan surroundings, yes, but surroundings have never been of any importance as far as your work is concerned, since the only space you occupy when you write your books is the page in front of your nose, — Paul Auster

If you wish your house to be well managed, imitate the Spartan Lycurgus. For as he did not fence his city with walls, but fortified the inhabitants by virtue and preserved the city always free;35 so do you not cast around (your house) a large court and raise high towers, but strengthen the dwellers by good-will and fidelity and friendship, and then nothing harmful will enter it, not even if the whole band of wickedness shall array itself against it. — Epictetus

Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: "Contempt for death." For us as artists, read "failure. — Steven Pressfield

You won't hurt me. I know you won't." Logan said.
"How can you be so sure?" I whispered.
"Because you're that Gypsy girl, and I'm the bad-boy Spartan. And I think it's time we were finally together, don't you? — Jennifer Estep

P R E S I D E N T Y O S H I D A'S T E N S P A R T A N R UlE S Hideo Yoshida's quest for management excellence was no doubt driven by his visions for Japanese marketing and media, but also by an overall worry about Japan's economic prospects after World War II. As a result, he developed a set of business and work principles, or rules, which he called the "Ten Spartan Rules": difficult work.5. Once you begin a task, complete it. Never give up.6. Lead and set an example for your fellow workers.7. Set goals for yourself to ensure a constant sense of purpose.8. Move with confidence. It gives your work force and substance.9. At all times, challenge yourself to think creatively and find new solutions.10. When confrontation is necessary, don't shy away from it. Confrontation is often necessary to achieve progress. These traditional work rules still guide Dentsu's employees, and are carried around in their notebooks — Anonymous

She scanned the Starveil posts, her mood darkening. Spartan had been a part of her life since elementary school. Losing him felt like having a piece of herself torn away. No amount of fix-it fics or alternate universes could change the fact her one true character had died. — Danika Stone

The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy. — Frank Miller

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don't need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days' time it will be the very thing he needs. Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task. His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page. — Hilary Mantel

..they all emulated and admired and were students of Spartan education, could tell their wisdom was of this sort by the brief but memorable remarks they each uttered when they met, writing what is on every man's lips: Know thyself, and Nothing too much. — Plato

Long distance hiking is not a vacation, it's too long for that. It's not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living ... life on the move ... heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine, companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are precious and important in life it is take them away. — Cindy Ross

Yeah, well this Gypsy girl happens to have a grandma that can curse you so bad that your dick will turn black and fall off, so watch your step, Spartan. — Jennifer Estep

My mother was the perfect Spartan mother. I have always been able to imagine her telling her sons to return from battle 'with their shields, or on them'. She did actually try it on my father at the start of the Second World War. He didn't take it kindly, and confided to me ruefully that he thought she rather fancied herself a Hero's Widow. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Crucial element of Greek education. In the city-state of Sparta, the most extreme example of this focus, young boys considered weak at birth were abandoned to die. The rest were sent to grueling boot camps, where they were toughened into Spartan soldiers from an early age. Around the fifth century BC, some Greek city-states, most notably Athens, began to experiment with a new form of government. "Our constitution is called a democracy," the Athenian statesman Pericles noted in his funeral oration, "because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the — Fareed Zakaria

Lewd to the least drop in the tiniest vein, Our sex is fitly food for Tragic Poets, Our whole life's but a pile of kisses and babies. But, hardy Spartan, if you join with me All may be righted yet. O help me, help me. — Aristophanes

A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself. — Plutarch

It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered amid an assortment of cardboard boxes and suitcases in a spartan room not unlike a prison cell that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own. — Bill Bryson

From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England, he had a Spartan struggle for life. — Alice Morse Earle