Socrates

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

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.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

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.

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.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

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

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.

I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

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