Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Be passionate about something and lean to that strength.

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.