Socrates

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

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

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.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

There are books which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.