Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

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.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

It’s hard to have it all. And if you’re compromising through one phase of your journey, you’re not giving it all up, you’re compromising for that phase

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life;

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.