Socrates Quotes

A multitude of books distracts the mind. A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all. An unexamined life is not worth living. Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are. Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher, and that is a good thing for any man. Call no man unhappy until he is married. Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. Enjoy yourself, it is later than you think. Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate. Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one. Happiness is unrepentant pleasure. He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature. He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. How can you call a man free when his pleasures rule over him. How many are the things I can do without! I am a fool, but I know I'm a fool and that makes me smarter than you. I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world. I call myself a Peaceful Warrior... because the battles we fight are on the inside. I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing. I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good. I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. 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. I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live. If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. 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. If you want to be wrong then follow the masses. In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent. In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine. It is better to make a mistake with full force of your being than to carefully avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one Know thyself Self-knowledge. Let him that would move the world, first move himself. Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth. Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it. Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak. 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. Nothing is to be preferred before justice. Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior. One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing. Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. Our lives are but specks of dust falling through the fingers of time. Like sands of the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us. Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune. See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all. Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise. Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me. Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding onto. The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow. The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him. The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor. The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods. The hottest love has the coldest end. The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows. The more I learn, the less I realize I know. The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. The unexamined life is not worth living. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul. There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend. There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed. Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults. To Believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly. To fear death, my friends is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. To find yourself, think for yourself. True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will. Understanding a question is half an answer. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit. What a lot of things there are a man can do without. When a woman is allowed to become a man's equal, she becomes his superior. When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success. Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth. Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence. Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Sign                  View

E-Mail             Next

Sugrbean is the Webmistress. Sugrbean owns and maintains this wonderful page. These pages are constantly being updated, please check back often. Sugrbean is not responsible for the contents of the banners displayed on this page.