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.

He is richest who is content with the least.

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

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

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

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

Love truth, but pardon error.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

There is a wisdom of the head, and there is a wisdom of the heart.

Language is the archives of history.