Socrates
The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.Collection: Change
How many things are there which I do not want.Collection: Life
Nothing very new. By taking good care of yourselves you are of service to me and my family as well as yourselves, no matter what you do, even if you don't think so at present. But if you neglect yourselves and are unwilling to live, as though following tracks, in accordance with what we now say and have said in the past too, then no matter how much or how seriously you agree with me at present you will accomplish next to nothing.Collection: Past
In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.Collection: Motivational
Laws are not made for the good.Collection: Law
God does not deal directly with man: it is by means of spirits that all the intercourse and communication of gods with men, both in waking life and in sleep, is carried on.Collection: Communication
How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?Collection: Travel
Get not your friends by bare compliments but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.Collection: Life
The duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the keener.Collection: Eye
The right way to begin is to pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.Collection: Attention
When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.Collection: Love
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.Collection: Life
You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.Collection: Divine
Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?Collection: Wise
And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels - temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth - she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes.Collection: Courage
The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it.......Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.Collection: Death
Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?Collection: Giving
I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.Collection: Eye
No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training; it is part of his profession as a citizen to keep himself in good condition... [It is] a disgrace for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable.Collection: Men
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.Collection: Motivational
A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.Collection: Giving Up
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be, all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.Collection: Honesty
This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.Collection: Philosophy
If you would seek health, look first to the spine.Collection: Looks
When you propose ridiculous things to believe, too many men will choose to believe nothing at all.Collection: Believe
Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truthCollection: Philosophy
A multitude of books distracts the mind.Collection: Book
One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.Collection: Men
No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.Collection: Men
Regard your good name as the richest jewel yoou can possibly be possessed of.Collection: Jewels
Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.Collection: Spiritual
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.Collection: Faith
An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.Collection: Daughter
To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.Collection: Men
It is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible.Collection: Oneself
Envy is the ulcer of the soul.Collection: Envy
Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?Collection: Integrity
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.Collection: Friendship
The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.Collection: Funny Inspirational
The wise man seeks death all his life, and for this reason death is not terrifying to him.Collection: Death
The uninitiated are those who believe in nothing except what they can grasp in their hands, and who deny the existence of all that is invisible.Collection: Believe
The universe really is motion & nothing else.Collection: Universe
Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb.Collection: Religious
The reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.Collection: Greed
My belief is that to have no wants is divine.Collection: Want
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.Collection: Philosophical
The invention of writing will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.Collection: Memories
No man has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical trainingCollection: Men