Socrates

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.

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.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

The amount of people in this world who are here to do something great far outweighs the rest.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.