Socrates

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

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.

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

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

To be free minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and sleep and of exercise is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

Any 20 year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.