Learn to live like the common people. I tell you, you'll get on much better. Don't hanker after the grand life, just look for peace and quiet as you grow old. The middle way: be neither too great nor too mean. The rich and powerful find no content: misfortune just hits them harder when they are brought low by the anger of the Gods.
Euripides Medea Nurse  123

You can't convince me that the men of old were wise. They invented songs and music to perform at banquets and feasts and celebrations, but really songs and music should be used to sweeten the pains and grief of life. That would be a real benefit, because sorrow, grief and misery are the things behind disasters and deaths and the destruction of families. Now, if music could do something about that, then that would be something. But why sing songs after a good dinner? What need is there, when everybody is happy and fully fed?
Euripides Medea Nurse 223

If a man has any sense, he will not teach his children to use their brains. What do you gain by it? You get a reputation for being idle, and your friends get jealous. Fools won't believe you when you tell them something they know nothing about and they will call you ignorant for your pains, and the intelligent will mistrust you in case you prove to be cleverer than they are.
Euripides Medea Medea to Creon 292

It seems to me that men and women
Who never have had children at all
Enjoy better luck than parents.
For those without children don't know
Whether children would be a blessing
Or a curse. So being without
They avoid a lot of grief and trouble.

But those who have the sweet presence
Of laughing children in their homes
Labour under constant concerns,
Worries, troubles and consternation.
First of all, how to rear them
Keeping them safe and secure. Then
How to get enough money
To give them a start in life, and last
How to know whether this work
Is thrown away on a worthless child.

Then, beyond all the common
Misfortunes of life, there's another worse:
Suppose they manage everything well.
The children are well provided for,
They've grown up, and, what's more,
They're honest and good - a throw of the dice,
And there they go, off into
The unknown regions of the dead.
Euripides Medea Chorus 1090

I tell you frankly: those who are generally considered to be intelligent, the ones who come up with fine theories - they are the most useless of all. Because happiness is a thing no man possesses. Good luck may come now to one man, now to another, but happiness, never.
Euripides Medea Messenger to Medea 1226

I will cover both major and minor communities equally, because most of those which were important in the past have diminished in significance by now, and those which were great in my own time were small in times past. I will mention both equally because I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
Thucydides History (1,5)