Socrates

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

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.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

I was the same old me. Just like the Moon yesterday. But because of all the other factors that came to play, the darkness, the brightness, the blood red color. They all were a reflection, a projection due to the perfect set of circumstances. The Moon was still the Moon. But it was still labeled the Super Blue Blood Moon, Just so we can have some understanding, but, again I’ll state, the Moon was still just the Moon, just like I was still just me. Whatever you project on me, and I reflect back, doesn’t then make me become a new person, it’s just a reflection of your projection. I am still just me.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.

You sold me a dream and it shattered. I didn’t know how to put it back together again. So instead, I’m lovingly gluing those fragments anew with seams of gold, creating a vibrant new dream, rendering the broken strong and more than ever, breathtakingly beautiful.