Socrates

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

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.

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.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.

To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

How many are the things I can do without!

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

When you’ve got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.