Quoted By:
My friends, would you kindly be serious for a brief while and give heed to my words? Verily you are forever being frivolous and heedless, and you are practically never at a loss for fun-making and enjoyment and laughter — indeed you have many who minister to such tendencies — but I find in you a complete lack of seriousness. And yet there are those who praise you for your wisdom and morals, asserting that, although you assemble here in thousands, you not only can conceive what is fitting but at the same time are quick to put your actions into words. But I for my part should prefer to praise you as being slow to speak, verily, and lacking self-restrained in morals. Pray display these qualities now, in order that you may acquire, in addition to that other praise, new praise of a different nature, both greater and more honourable — for having all become deaf in this great throng when useful counsel was being given and, furthermore, for having shown that you can not merely think before you speak but also listen before you formulate your thought. For while it is praising a chorus to say that they all speak the words together in unison — or rather not even a chorus, for what if all in common miss the tune? — the highest praise you can accord a mass-meeting is to say that it listens well.
The Hoennians, as we know, made a bad use of the ears of their sons, but you are making a worse use of your own. For the organ of hearing of a moral people is the temple, and into your temples there enters nothing beautiful or honourable, or very rarely; but it is always full of the strumming of the harp and of uproar, buffoonery, and inanity, things that bear no resemblance to gold. For that reason, therefore, I was right in saying that you lack seriousness; for neither are you yourselves serious, nor are they serious with whom you are familiar, and who often come before you in the guise of moral people.