Pindar

Every line we carry

Each one links to its source, what it means, and the shirt in any of our looks.

1. Become who you are, once you have learned who that is.

   Pindar's advice has two parts: first learn what you are, then grow into it fully. Self-knowledge without action stays a theory; action without self-knowledge copies someone else. Find your nature, then live up to it.

   Pythian Ode 2.72, our translation from the Greek

2. Learn who you are. Then become it.

   Pindar closes an ode to a king with a short command: become such as you are, having learned what that is. The order matters, first the learning, then the becoming. You find out what you are made of by testing it, and then you spend your life growing into it instead of copying someone else's shape.

   Pythian 2.72, our translation from the Greek

3. Creatures of a day. Man is the dream of a shadow.

   Pindar asks what a person is and what a person is not, and answers that we live for a day and are a shadow's dream. He is not being gloomy for its own sake. The point is that a life is short and thin, so the moments of real brightness are worth everything. Do not waste the light when it comes.

   Pythian 8.95-96, our translation from the Greek

4. Don't chase an endless life, my soul. Drain what is possible.

   Pindar talks to his own soul and tells it to stop longing for immortality and use up every resource it actually has. Albert Camus later put this line at the front of The Myth of Sisyphus. It is a call to work with the life in front of you, fully and to the bottom of the cup, instead of dreaming about a different one.

   Pythian 3.61-62, our translation from the Greek

5. Water is best.

   The first words of Pindar's most famous ode, before he praises gold and the Olympic games. Water comes first because everything else depends on it. It is a three-word reminder of what actually matters, and a good line for anyone who lives by the sea.

   Olympian 1.1, our translation from the Greek

6. Why sit in the dark, nursing a nameless old age?

   Before a deadly chariot race, the young hero Pelops says that great danger does not take hold of a coward, and that since all must die, there is no point sitting in the shadows stewing an old age with no name. He chooses the risk. Everyone ends up in the same place, so spend your life on something worth the danger.

   Olympian 1.81-84, our translation from the Greek

7. Courage without risk earns no honor, on land or at sea.

   Pindar says that excellence that risks nothing is honored neither among men nor in hollow ships, while many remember a fine deed won with effort. Praise follows the person who put something on the line. If it cost you nothing, it proves nothing.

   Olympian 6.9-11, our translation from the Greek

8. Time alone proves what is true.

   Describing the first Olympic games, Pindar says time stood by as the only one that tests genuine truth. Opinions, hype and first impressions fade. Give it enough years and the real worth of a person, a promise or a piece of work shows itself.

   Olympian 10.53-55, our translation from the Greek

9. The right moment is the peak of everything.

   Pindar uses the Greek word kairos, the opportune moment, and says it holds the summit of every matter. Effort matters, but timing decides. Read the set, wait for the wave, speak when it will be heard.

   Pythian 9.78-79, our translation from the Greek

10. Better envied than pitied. Don't let the good things go.

    Pindar advises a ruler not to hold back for fear of gossip, because envy is better than pity. Doing well will always draw some resentment. Do the fine thing anyway; the alternative is being safe from envy because there is nothing left to envy.

    Pythian 1.85-86, our translation from the Greek

11. Steer with a just rudder. Forge your tongue on the anvil of truth.

    Two images from the sea and the forge: guide your people with a straight rudder, and hammer your words on an anvil that does not lie. Direction and honesty are things you shape on purpose, every day, not things you are born with.

    Pythian 1.86, our translation from the Greek

12. Words outlive deeds.

    Pindar says the spoken word lives longer than the deeds it describes. Victories are forgotten unless someone tells them well. What we say, write and pass on is what survives us.

    Nemean 4.6, our translation from the Greek

13. Toil and cost always fight for excellence, toward a deed wrapped in danger.

    Pindar praises a chariot victor by naming the price: effort and expense always struggle toward an achievement hidden in risk. Nothing excellent comes cheap or safe. Count the cost going in, and pay it.

    Olympian 5.15-16, our translation from the Greek

14. Custom is king of all.

    Herodotus tells how Greeks and Indians were each horrified by the other's funeral customs, and concludes that Pindar was right to call custom king of all. Most of what feels obvious to us is habit. Knowing that makes you slower to judge and quicker to question your own defaults.

    Fragment 169, quoted by Herodotus 3.38, our translation from the Greek