Socrates

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

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

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.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

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

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

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

Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.