For a long time i have been looking for quotes concerning 'willpower' or 'strength of will'. I would especially like quotes from Greek literature concerning willpower or detemination or control of the self or something. Does anyone know any good quotes/lines on this subject?
Good question, Gitane! The difficulty is that the ancient Greeks had no concept of “will power” as we conceive it in modern times, or even of “will.” To Quote from Bruno Snell (
The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Τhought, Harvard 1953):
But the will
is a notion foreign to the Greeks; they do not
even have a word for it. Thelein means “to be ready, to be
prepared for something.” Boulesthai is “to view something as
(more) desirable.” The former denotes a subjective
preparedness, a kind of voluntary attitude devoid of specific
commitment; the latter refers to a wish or plan (boule) aimed
at a particular object, i.e. a disposition closely related to the
understanding and appreciation of a gain. But neither word
expresses a realization of the will, the effective inclination of
subject toward object.For a long time after Homer, the mind was a twofold thing: the “seeing” mind (
nous) and the (e)motive mind (
thymos). What we interpret as the power of the “will” was more often seen by the Greeks as the action of some divine force (
daimonion) upon the
thymos , moving it toward some object, whether for good or ill.
Even in Homer, however, it is possible for
nous to dominate
thymos, and there, Gitane, we can locate the other concept you bring up, that of “self control.” In the first book of the Iliad, Athena orders Achilles to put up the sword he has drawn in anger, by bidding him σὺ δ’ ἴσχεο, πείθεο δ’ ἡμῖν (“But you, control yourself, obey us [gods]”).
The most famous expression of self-control was in the second Delphic precept, inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi: MHΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ, “Nothing too much,” of equal rank with the other maxim, ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, “Know yourself.” Self-knowledge and self-control were associated concepts. According to Heraclitus (fr. 116), Ἀνθρώποισι πᾶσι μέτεστι γινώσκειν ἑωυτοὺς καὶ σωφρονεῖν, “It is given to all humans to know themselves and to control themselves” again, mind over emotion,
nous over
thymos. In Plato’s Gorgias 491d10, Socrates defines the superior man as σώφρονα ὄντα καὶ ἐγκρατῆ αὐτὸν ἑαυτοῦ, τῶν ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν ἄρχοντα τῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ, “self-controlled and in possession of himself, governing the pleasures and passions within himself.”
Self-control was famously summed up in the noun
sophrosyne. As Socrates notices in Plato’s Symposium 196c4, εἶναι γὰρ ὁμολογεῖται σωφροσύνη τὸ κρατεῖν ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν, “for it is agreed that
sophrosyne is the controlling of pleasures and passions.”
There, Gitane. And perhaps others on the Forum can contribute other famous instances of
sophrosyne in Greek literature.