“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
“The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.”
“The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.”
“The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.”
“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.”
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
“In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”
“Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”
“They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.”
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”
“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.”
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
“The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.”
“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.”
“Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.”
“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
“I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.”
“Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.”
“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”
“No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.”
“Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.”
“Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.”
“Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”
“Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.”