Socrates

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

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

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

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.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I’ve forgotten the road by which I came.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

All mankind love a lover.

Always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

There is always a best way of doing everything.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.