Socrates

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

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Those who trust us educate us.

Nothing is real.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.