Menander Quotes

It is the misfortune of those who are concerned in conducting human affairs that, however pure and capacious their own conceptions may be, they must accommodate themselves to the circumstances with which they are environed and use the instruments that are within their reach.

We must do as we may when we may not do as we would.

There's always going to be something. Can't be perfect.

We have to deal with the world as we find it. The world of what it takes to get this done.

If you cannot have what you believe in, you must believe in what you have.

A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is.

You can't always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances.

But what is to be done? Is it possible to infect ourselves on purpose just in order to have the satisfaction of dying beautifully and tranquilly? No! What is to be done? We must live while we are alive, eat dry bread if there is no roast beef, know many women if it is not possible to love a woman, and, in general, we must not dream about orange trees and palms, when under foot are snowdrifts and the cold tundra.

We have to learn how to work within the limits that are possible, not what is desirable.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.

We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

You don't often get a choice in who your enemies are, who you're friends with, what your situation is, and the environment you're placed in. You just have to make do with what you have.

You work with what you got.

Don't fight a fact, deal with it.

I do the best with what exists.

Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.

You win any which way you can. You do what you have to do to get by. That's the way it works in any job.

It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway.

I guess you deal with what you get.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

It is best to live however one can be.