Apophthegmata Laconica

When a certain advocate kept making jests, he said, You had better be on your guard, my friend, against jesting all the time, lest you become a jest yourself, just as those who wrestle all the time become wrestlers.

In retort to the man who imitated a nightingale, he said, My friend, I have had more pleasure in hearing the nightingale itself. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 212 F (58), supra. )

When someone said that a certain evil-speaker was commending him, he said, I wonder whether possibly someone may not have told him that I was dead; for the man can never say a good word of anybody who is alive. [*](Cf. the note on Moralia, 224 D (1), supra. )

Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an Attic orator called the Spartans unlearned, said, You are