Socrates

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.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.

Our best history is still poetry.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

Nothing does Reason more Right, than the Coolness of those that offer it: for Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.