Socrates

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

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.

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

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

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.

Logic is like the sword – those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.