“Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.”
“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”
“Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”
“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
“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.”
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“Envy is the ulcer of the soul.”
“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.”
“All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of – for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
“An honest man is always a child.”
“The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.”
“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.”
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.”
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
“Be as you wish to seem.”
“The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.”
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”
“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
“The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.”
“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.”
“Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.”
“One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.”
“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
“Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.”
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
“Philosophy begins with wonder.”
“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
“How much there is in the world I do not want.”
“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.”
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.”
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
“Let him that would move the world first move himself.”
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
“It is not living that matters, but living rightly.”
“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.”
“The right way to begin is to pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.”
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”
“He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.”
“I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”
“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
“An education obrained with money is worse than no education at all.”
