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

When asked by a woman from Attica:'Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?', she said: 'Because we are the only ones who give birth to men. — Plutarch

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

If there's anyone out there who has taken extreme to a new level, its Joe De Sena - in adventure racing, in business, and ultimately in the business of adventure! Spartan Up! is must-read. — Robyn Benincasa

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

Give them nothing, but take from them everything. — Frank Miller

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

Write to me your most perfect epitaph, or I shall compare a poet to a lecturer. Thou art more Spartan than a ballad monger who makes his living as a Wal-Mart greeter; — Scott Jonathan Nixon

Die? Didn't you hear? SPARTAN's never die. — Eric Nylund

Just another part of that Spartan killer instinct. I can slay the ladies just as well as I can reapers. — Jennifer Estep

Kelly hesitated, then saluted.
John turned and grabbed her arm. "Come on, Spartan. Don't look back."
The truth was, it was John who didn't dare look back. If he had, he would have stayed with Sam. Better to die with a friend than leave him behind. But as much as he wanted to fight and die alongside his friend, he had to set an example for the rest of the Spartans -- and live to fight another day.
John and Kelly pushed the pressure doors shut behind them.
"Good-bye," he whispered. — Eric Nylund

Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power. Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to decipher nature's secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the gruelling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers, settling down to enjoy the pleasant, satiated life of farmers. — Yuval Noah Harari

It is the custom to look back on ourselves of the boom days with a disapproval that approaches horror ... But it had its virtues, that old boom: Life was a great deal larger and gayer for most people, and the stampede to the Spartan virtues in times of war and famine shouldn't make us too dizzy to remember its hilarious glory. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life — Henry David Thoreau

Distinguishing Marks
Every land has its distinguishing mark.
Particular to Thessaly are horsemanship and horses;
what marks a Spartan
is war's season; Media has
its tables with their dishes;
hair marks the Celts, the Assyrians have beards.
But the marks that distinguish
Athens are Mankind and the Word. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Admiral Spartan thinks that the object must be exposed and penetrated with all possible speed. — Lincoln Child

The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I look down and see that Colter has returned and has gone on lock-solid, drop-dead point about twenty feet in front of us, head and shoulders hunched and crouched, bony ass stuck way up in the air, body half-twisted, frozen, as if cautioning us of some hidden, deadly betrayal: and green eyes afire, stub tail motionless. We ease forward, adrenaline-drunk. Nothing happens. And then it does. The cock-bird climbs towering above and then flares and accelerates away; Tim fires twice, I fire twice, Colter runs shrieking after the untouched bird, and from across that spartan landscape we hear the cattlewomen snort small laughs of disbelief, and one of them says, "Oops, they missed again." We — Rick Bass

It's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman. — Barry S. Strauss

Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, their arrows would block out the sun. Dienekes, however, undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we will fight in the shade. — Herodotus

In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. — Dan Simmons

Everyone knew that democracy-direct rule by all the people-required such spartan, sel denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race. — Bernard Bailyn

I had been reading Wittgenstein. There are no philosophical problems, only linguistic misunderstandings. Was this so? If so, why write at such length about it? I could understand [his] attraction to such a philosophy. Spartan, rigorous. Surpassingly skeptical. Well, good: philosophers should be skeptical. (No one else is: the mass of mankind is credulous as a gigantic infant, willing to suck any teat.) — Joyce Carol Oates

Liv had made it to Dragon Con. She had people to stay with and money in her pocket. Now all she needed to do was meet Spartan and she could die happy. — Danika Stone

The maxim of the famous Spartan nurses: never expose a small child to fear, let him enter confidently on boyhood. — Mary Renault

Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received. — Walter Benjamin

Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied ... — Plutarch

The house was dark. Upstairs, behind the black open window with the pale curtain flapping in the spartan air, slept Arthur Morrison, trainer of the forty-three racehorses in the stables below. Morrison habitually slept lightly. His ears were sharper than half a dozen guard dogs', his stable-hands said. — Dick Francis

They passed the Gates of Thermopylae the following day and Alexander stopped to visit the tombs of the Spartan soldiers who had fallen one hundred and forty years previously during their battle with the Persian invaders. He read the simple inscription in Laconian dialect that commemorated their ultimate sacrifice and he stood in silence listening to the wind blowing in from the sea.
How ephemeral is the destiny of man!' he exclaimed. 'All that is left of the thunder of a momentous clash which shook the whole world and an act of heroism worthy of Homer's verses are these few lines. All is quiet now. — Valerio Massimo Manfredi

For some the fairest thing on the dark earth is Thermopylae,
And the Spartan phalanx lowering lances to die. — Sappho

Yeah, you're probably right,' I said, forcing myself to smile at him. Logan grinned back at me. 'Of course, I'm right. I'm always right.' I rolled my eyes, leaned over, and lightly punched him in the shoulder. 'And now you sound like Vic.' 'No, he doesn't,' Vic piped up from his spot in the chair I'd propped him up in. 'I am much more confident than the Spartan is.' He sniffed. 'And with good reason. — Jennifer Estep

One of them, the philosopher Philostratus, summed up the idea by saying that the great athletes of the past "made war training for sport, and sport training for war." Turning Spartan logic on its head, Plutarch even claimed that the Thebans at the great Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC defeated the Spartans because they had done more training at the palaestra; he also wrote that sport, wrestling specifically included, was an imitation and exercise of war. — Martin Van Creveld

Do you know how wind and water are unstoppable? The smallest cracks give wind and water all they need to creep through and make it chilly and wet. Well, I am also kind of drafty and leaky. I cannot stop up my fissures with purchases at the mall. Neither can I hold back the wind and the water with my expectations of living a spartan life. — Dave Bruno

I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with.
The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother-'Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat. — Geraldine Brooks

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. — Henry David Thoreau

Cambridge exceeded our most macabre expectations ... the arm-chairs, the crumpets, the beautifully-bound eighteenth century volumes, the fires roaring in stoked grates. Each of us had the loan of an absent undergraduate's rooms - bedroom, sitting-room and pantry; all fitted up in a style which, after the spartan simplicity of a public school study, seemed positively sinful. — Christopher Isherwood

A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it." — Plutarch

Bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind; So flew'd, so sanded; their heads are hung with ears that sweep away the morning dew ... — William Shakespeare

A writer should remember that about his muse there is a great deal of the Siren. He should view his mental offspring as relentlessly as a Spartan father - if it is not perfectly sound, let it be cast out. — F.L. Lucas

Feel no fear before the multitude of men, do not run in panic,
but let each man bear his shield straight toward the fore-fighters,
regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark spirits of death as dear as the radiance of the sun. — Tyrtaeus

I'm crazy about you, Spartan. — Jennifer Estep

Val Kilmer gave my husband, David Mamet, a Randall knife as a gift when the two of them were making the film 'Spartan.' — Rebecca Pidgeon

first ever military cryptographic device, the Spartan scytale, dating back to the fifth century B.C. The scytale is a wooden staff around which a strip of leather or parchment is wound, — Simon Singh

Every other Spartan on the field charged as well, hundreds of half-camouflaged armored figures, running and firing at the dazed Jackals, appearing as a wave of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part mirage, part nightmare.
They screamed a battle cry, momentarily drowning the sound of gunfire and explosion.
Tom yelled with them--for the fallen, for his friends, and for the blood of his enemies. — Eric Nylund

What did you expect? That he'd send you flowers and write you bad poetry? That dead Nemean prowler is pretty much as close to a stuffed animal as you're ever going to get from a Spartan like Logan Quinn. — Jennifer Estep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

..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

Spartan is about this elite unit of the armed forces named the Delta Force. I play a protege of Val Kilmer's character, and he kind of gives me a hard time. — Derek Luke

MacMurrough shifted his gaze from the thick spittle-wet mouth and stared instead through the garden windows. What a dreary drunk he was. He recalled the Spartan custom of inebriating slaves that young men should see how contemptible was drunkenness. Nowadays we leave it to our leshishlashors. — Jamie O'Neill

I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffett, and I certainly do not see point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If your 401(k) is lucky enough to have Vanguard funds, look for, respectively, the (U.S.) Total Stock Market Index Fund, Total International Stock Index Fund, and either the Short-Term Bond Index or Total Bond Market Index Fund. As already mentioned, the Fidelity Spartan series is also excellent: the Total Market Index, International Index, and U.S. Bond Index (or Short-Term Treasury Bond Index) funds. — Anonymous

BB didn't say a word. Maybe integrating into Naomi's systems had shut him up for once. Mal decided to keep a watchful eye on the relationship. Everyone was getting on fine: better than fine, in fact, a really close-knit and easy-going team. The last thing they needed was a Spartan saddled with an AI she didn't want. But that wasn't a problem he could solve, given that they were the two most advanced and expensive pieces of defense technology the UNSC had ever produced. They were stuck with each other. — Karen Traviss

Her gaze darted back to the computer screen. THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION. If she posted this, it needed to be real. She needed people to believe Spartan could come back. They needed to trust that he'd made it out of the ship. It couldn't just be fangirl to fangirl, writing Starveil AU's that never really happened. This would be the guerrilla warfare of character ships. The fans would have to reweave the details they had into a new explanation of those last seconds of film. They'd take no prisoners, leave no wounded fans behind. But, as in any war, that meant the intel behind the revolution had to stay secret for as long as possible.
Fandom had to believe. — Danika Stone

I'll give you this, Spartan. You sure can kiss. Feel free to lay one on me anytime you want to."
"Well, I do aim to please," he drawled. "You should see what I can do with my hands. And other parts of my body."
I rolled my eyes. "Seriously? You've been cut open like a fish, there's a psycho-killer Reaper after us, and you're still hitting me up for sex?"
Logan shrugged, but the devilish light didn't fade from his gaze. "Hey, you can't blame a guy for trying. — Jennifer Estep

Google is famous for making the tiniest changes to pixel locations based on the data it accrues through its tests. Google will always choose a spartan webpage that converts over a beautiful page that doesn't have the data to back it up. — Ben Parr

I wil not compare the education of an ancient Spartan with that of a British nobleman. — Thomas Day

What's the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker? One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment.'The king sleeps in that shithole over there' he replies. 'We sleep in this shithole over here. — Steven Pressfield

My mother was mad, but I was not. My father was old, but I was young. Like Spartan Helen, I caused a war. She caused hers by letting men who wanted her take her. I caused mine because I wouldn't be given, wouldn't be taken, but chose my man and my fate. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Perhaps Zeus was king, but I was Spartan, a princess twice over, and queen of Athens besides. I knew my duty. And I would rule my own fate. — Amalia Carosella

We are created for precisely this sort of suffering. In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you, Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him even as consumption does the same work with its effortless efficiency?
Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once. — Dan Simmons

If #SpartanSurvived failed in its efforts, no one would be the wiser. There was no risk to her online persona. No backlash from haters. Anonymity's cloak both protected her and kept the torch of Spartan alive. Because as much as fandom knew a fan had created the post, the faceless message held the faint promise of authenticity. And if people believed it, then the magic was real. They could change Spartan's fate, because they thought they could, and tonight's video would cast the first spell. — Danika Stone

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

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

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

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

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