There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul - if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do...
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two 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.
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.
If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time: and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If dea...
God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter t...
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...
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
I am a citizen not of Athens or Greece but of the world.
The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
Wisdom is knowing you know nothing
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 withou...
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
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.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.
What most counts is not to live but to live aright.
.. is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange?- and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage, t...
The misuse of language induces evil in the soul