From Pindar’s Olympian 7 (24-52), for Diagoras of Rhodes, winner of boxing in 464. Often Pindar is just pretty and no other point is needed.

But about the minds of humans hang
numberless errors, and it is impossible to discover
what now and also in the end is best to happen to a man.
Thus it is that the founder of this land once struck
Alcmene’s bastard brother Licymnius
with a staff of hard olive in Tiryns
when he came from Midea’s chambers and killed him
in a fit of anger. Disturbances of the mind
lead astray even a wise man. He went to the god for an oracle,
and from the fragrant inner sanctum of his temple
the golden-haired god
told him to sail from the shore of Lerna
straight to the seagirt pasture,
where once the great king of the gods showered
the city with snows of gold,
when, by the skills of Hephaestus
with the stroke of a bronze-forged axe,
Athena sprang forth on the top of her father’s head
and shouted a prodigious battle cry,
and Heaven shuddered at her, and mother Earth.
At that time Hyperion’s son, divine bringer of light
to mortals, charged his dear children
to observe the obligation that was to come,
that they might be the first to build for the goddess
an altar in full view, and by making
a sacred sacrifice might cheer the hearts of the father
and his daughter of the thundering spear. Reverence
for one who has foresight plants excellence and its joys in humans,
but without warning some cloud of forgetfulness comes upon them
and wrests the straight path of affairs
from their minds.
Thus it was that they made their ascent without taking
the seed of blazing flame, and with fireless sacrifices
they made a sanctuary on the acropolis.
He [Zeus] brought a yellow cloud and upon them
rained gold in abundance; but the Gray-eyed Goddess
herself gave them every kind of skill to surpass mortals
with their superlative handiwork.
Their streets bore works of art in the likeness of beings
that lived and moved, and great was their fame.

ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων φρασὶν ἀμπλακίαι
ἀναρίθμητοι κρέμανται: τοῦτο δ᾽ ἀμάχανον εὑρεῖν,
ὅ τι νῦν ἐν καὶ τελευτᾷ φέρτατον ἀνδρὶ τυχεῖν.
καὶ γὰρ Ἀλκμήνας κασίγνητον νόθον
σκάπτῳ θένων
σκληρᾶς ἐλαίας ἔκταν᾽ ἐν Τίρυνθι Λικύμνιον ἐλθόντ᾽ ἐκ θαλάμων Μιδέας
τᾶσδέ ποτε χθονὸς οἰκιστὴρ χολωθείς. αἱ δὲ φρενῶν ταραχαὶ
παρέπλαγξαν καὶ σοφόν. μαντεύσατο δ᾽ ἐς θεὸν ἐλθών.
τῷ μὲν ὁ Χρυσοκόμας εὐώδεος ἐξ ἀδύτου ναῶν πλόον
εἶπε Λερναίας ἀπ᾽ ἀκτᾶς εὐθὺν ἐς ἀμφιθάλασσον νομόν,
ἔνθα ποτὲ βρέχε θεῶν βασιλεὺς ὁ μέγας χρυσέαις νιφάδεσσι πόλιν,
ἁνίχ᾽ Ἁφαίστου τέχναισιν
χαλκελάτῳ πελέκει πατέρος Αθαναία κορυφὰν κατ᾽ ἄκραν
ἀνορούσαισ᾽ ἀλάλαξεν ὑπερμάκει βοᾷ:
Οὐρανὸς δ᾽ ἔφριξέ νιν καὶ Γαῖα μάτηρ.
τότε καὶ φαυσίμβροτος δαίμων Ὑπεριονίδας
μέλλον ἔντειλεν φυλάξασθαι χρέος
παισὶν φίλοις,
ὡς ἂν θεᾷ πρῶτοι κτίσαιεν βωμὸν ἐναργέα, καὶ σεμνὰν θυσίαν θέμενοι
πατρί τε θυμὸν ἰάναιεν κόρᾳ τ᾽ ἐγχειβρόμῳ. ἐν δ᾽ ἀρετὰν
ἔβαλεν καὶ χάρματ᾽ ἀνθρώποισι Προμαθέος Αἰδώς:
ἐπὶ μὰν βαίνει τε καὶ λάθας ἀτέκμαρτα νέφος,
καὶ παρέλκει πραγμάτων ὀρθὰν ὁδὸν
ἔξω φρενῶν.
καὶ τοὶ γὰρ αἰθοίσας ἔχοντες σπέρμ᾽ ἀνέβαν φλογὸς οὔ: τεῦξαν δ᾽ ἀπύροις ἱεροῖς
ἄλσος ἐν ἀκροπόλει: κείνοις ὁ μὲν ξανθὰν ἀγαγὼν νεφέλαν
πολὺν ὗσε χρυσόν: αὐτὰ δέ σφισιν ὤπασε τέχναν
πᾶσαν ἐπιχθονίων Γλαυκῶπις ἀριστοπόνοις χερσὶ κρατεῖν.
ἔργα δὲ ζωοῖσιν ἑρπόντεσσί θ᾽ ὁμοῖα κέλευθοι φέρον:
ἦν δὲ κλέος βαθύ.

From Pindar’s Olympian 2 (82-88):

…I have many swift arrows
under my arm
in their quiver
that speak to those who understand, but for the whole subject, they need
interpreters. Wise is he who knows many things
by nature, whereas learners who are boisterous
and long-winded are like a pair of crows that cry in vain
against the divine bird of Zeus.

… πολλά μοι ὑπ᾿
ἀγκῶνος ὠκέα βέλη
ἔνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας
φωνάεντα συνετοῖσιν· ἐς δὲ τὸ πὰν ἑρμανέων
χατίζει. σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ·
μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι
παγγλωσσίᾳ κόρακες ὣς ἄκραντα γαρύετον

Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον·

A scholia adds:

κόρακες· . . .αἰνίττεται Βακχυλίδην καὶ Σιμωνίδην, ἑαυτὸν λέγων ἀετόν, κόρακας δὲ τοὺς ἀντιτέχνους

Crows – he makes a riddling reference to Bacchylides and Simonides, calling himself an eagle and his rivals crows.

But that’s the sort of thing scholiasts always add.

Pindar Fragment 61 (but taken from v.2 of the Loeb Early Greek Philosophy set):

What do you expect wisdom to be, if it is only by a little
That one man possesses it more than another?
For it is impossible for him
To discover the gods’ plans with a human mind (phreni):
He was born of a mortal mother.

τί ἔλπεαι σοφίαν ἔμμεν, ἃν ὀλίγον τοι
ἀνὴρ ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς ἴσχει;
οὐ γὰρ ἔσθ᾽ ὅπως τὰ θεῶν
βουλεύματ’ ἐρευνάσει βροτέᾳ φρενί·
θνατᾶς δ᾽ἀπὸ ματρὸς ἔφυ.

From Pindar Nemean 3.40ish, with Loeb text and translation.

συγγενεῖ δέ τις εὐδοξίᾳ μέγα βρίθει.
ὃς δὲ διδάκτ᾿ ἔχει, ψεφεννὸς ἀνὴρ
ἄλλοτ᾿ ἄλλα πνέων οὔ ποτ᾿ ἀτρεκεῖ
κατέβα ποδί, μυριᾶν δ᾿ ἀρετᾶν ἀτελεῖ νόῳ γεύεται.

One with inborn glory carries great weight,
but he who has mere learning is a shadowy man;
ever changing his purpose, he never takes a precise
step, but attempts innumerable feats with an ineffectual
mind.

The single citation for ψεφεννός I can find is right here but it’s clearly related to another rare word – ψέφος or darkness (which appears as ψέφας in a fragment from Pindar).  But for the logic to follow, the sense has to be in contrast with βρίθω – which Slater’s Lexicon to Pindar, citing this appearance, gives as “be heavy met. συγγενεῖ δέ τις εὐδοξίᾳ μέγα βρίθει prevails, is powerful.”  The image would accordingly have to veer more toward  the association of dark with fog with shadow with shade/spirit with flitting lightness with inconstancy and ineffectuality.  And that movement toward spirit and lightness would seem confirmed with the next line’s πνέων which generally means ‘to breath’ but which Slater cites for this location as falling under the metaphorical sense of “be minded, have aspirations.”  All of which would come together in translation as:

One with inborn glory has great heft,
but he who has learning is an aery/insubstantial fog
aspiring now to one thing, now to another, and never
stepping with determined foot.  Countless achievements does he taste but with a mind that brings none to a conclusion.

I’m certainly projecting my own guilt for intellectual flightiness into Pindar’s conclusion but my rendering avoid’s the Loeb’s unjustifiable insertion of “[mere] learning.” My ἀτρεκής is easily within bounds of the accepted ‘precise, accurate, strict’, my γεύω sheds a loose metaphorical rendering, and my ἀτελής holds closer to the etymological basis.  I call it an improvement.  But the Loeb translator Race has the last laugh because I read his version while no one will read the one I spent 30 minutes on.

From Pindar’s Nemean 1 (text and translation from the Loeb) – following baby Heracles’ dispatching of the Hera-sent snakes.  A personally revealing observation here but I much appreciate the simple touch that all his life’s labors lead only to peace (εἰρήνη) and quiet (ἡσυχία) – the latter called the choicest recompense (ποινὰν ἐξαίρετον) for his great efforts.  Too rarely is Heracles given a side past man of action and too rarely does Greek literature recognize the joy of relaxation.

[Amphitryon] summoned his neighbor,
the foremost prophet of highest Zeus,
the straight-speaking seer Teiresias, who declared to him
and to all the people what fortunes he would encounter:

all the lawless beasts he would slay on land
and all those in the sea;
and to many a man who traveled
in crooked excess he said that
he would give the most hateful doom.
And furthermore, when the gods would meet the Giants
in battle on the plain of Phlegra,
he said that beneath a volley of his arrows
their bright hair would be fouled

with earth, but that he himself
in continual peace for all time
would be allotted tranquillity as the choicest
recompense for his great labors…

---

γείτονα δ᾿ ἐκκάλεσεν
Διὸς ὑψίστου προφάταν ἔξοχον,
ὀρθόμαντιν Τειρεσίαν· ὁ δέ οἱ
φράζε καὶ παντὶ στρατῷ, ποίαις ὁμιλήσει τύχαις,

ὅσσους μὲν ἐν χέρσῳ κτανών,
ὅσσους δὲ πόντῳ θῆρας ἀιδροδίκας·
καί τινα σὺν πλαγίῳ
ἀνδρῶν κόρῳ στείχοντα τὸν ἐχθρότατον
φᾶσέ νιν δώσειν μόρον.
καὶ γὰρ ὅταν θεοὶ ἐν
πεδίῳ Φλέγρας Γιγάντεσσιν μάχαν
ἀντιάζωσιν, βελέων ὑπὸ ῥι-
παῖσι κείνου φαιδίμαν γαίᾳ πεφύρσεσθαι κόμαν

ἔνεπεν· αὐτὸν μὰν ἐν εἰρή-
νᾳ τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον <ἐν> σχερῷ
ἡσυχίαν καμάτων μεγάλων
ποινὰν λαχόντ᾿ ἐξαίρετον