Great Throughts Treasury

"The Gross man is one who will insult freeborn women; who, in a theatre, will applaud when others cease, and hiss the actors who please the rest of the spectators."

"The Grumbler is one who, when his friend has sent him a present from his table, will say to the bearer, ‘You grudged me my soup and my poor wine, or you would have asked me to dinner.’"

"The habit of Evil-speaking is a bent of the mind towards putting things in the worst light."

"The Ironical Man is one who goes up to his enemies, and volunteers to chat with them, instead of showing hatred"

"The Late-Learner is one who will study passages for recitation when he is sixty, and break down in repeating them over his wine."

"The man of Petty Ambition is one who, when asked to dinner, will be anxious to be placed next to the host at table."

"The Mean man is one who, when he has gained the prize in a tragic contest, will dedicate a wooden scroll to Dionysus, having had it inscribed with his own name."

"The Offensive man is one who will go about with a scrofulous or leprous affection, or with his nails overgrown, and say that these are hereditary complaints with him; his father had them, and his grandfather, and it is not easy to be smuggled into his family …"

"The Officious man is one who will rise and promise things beyond his power; and who, when an arrangement is admitted to be just, will oppose it, and be refuted."

"The Oligarch is one who, when the people are deliberating whom they shall associate with the archon as joint directors of the procession, will come forward and express his opinion that these directors ought to have plenary powers."

"The Oligarchical temper would seem to consist in a love of authority, covetous, not of gain, but of power."

"The Patron of Rascals is one who will throw himself into the company of those who have lost lawsuits and have been found guilty in criminal causes; conceiving that, if he associates with such persons, he will become more a man of the world, and will inspire the greater awe."

"The Patronising of Rascals is a form of the appetite for vice."

"The Penurious man is one who, while the month is current, will come to one’s house and ask for a half-obol. When he is at table with others, he will count how many cups each of them has drunk; and will pour a smaller libation to Artemis than any of the company."

"The Reckless man is one who will lightly take an oath, being proof against abuse, and capable of giving it; in character a coarse fellow, defiant of decency, ready to do anything; just the person to dance the cordax, sober and without a mask, in a comic chorus."

"The Shameless man is one who, in the first place, will and borrow from the creditor whose money he is withholding."

"The Stupid man is one who, after doing a sum and setting down the total, will ask the person sitting next to him ‘What does it come to?’"

"The Superstitious man is one who will wash his hands at a fountain, sprinkle himself from a temple-font, put a bit of laurel-leaf into his mouth, and so go about the day."

"The Surly man is one who, when asked where so-and-so is, will say, ‘Don’t bother me’."

"The Unpleasant man is one who will come in an awake a person who has just gone to sleep, in order to chat with him."

"The Unseasonable man is one who will go up to a busy person, and open his heart to him."

"The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes up to you when you are head over ears in work and confides to you all about it. He serenades his mistress when she is ill with fever. He approaches a man who has been cast in a surety case and asks him to stand surety for him. He appears to give evidence after the verdict is given."

"Then, warming to the work, he [the garrulous type] will remark that the men of the present day are greatly inferior to the ancients; and how cheap wheat has become in the market; and what a number of foreigners are in town; and that the sea is navigable after the Dionysia; and that, if Zeus would send more rain, the crops would be better;"

"Unpleasantness may be defined as a mode of address which gives harmless annoyance."

"Unseasonableness consists in a chance meeting disagreeable to those who meet."

"We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology, their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life."