"Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity."

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less."

"As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent."

"I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. ...I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect--for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects."

"I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?"

"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be."

"And now we go, you to your lives, and I to death, and which of us goes to the better only God knows"

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."

"Through your rags I see your vanity."

"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 knowing in the least what they mean."

"If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality."

"In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep."

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."

"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher ... and that is a good thing for any man."

"Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one."

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

"And a thing is not seen because it is visible, but; conversely, visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because; it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the; state of being carried, but the converse of this. And now I think, Euthyphro, that my meaning will be intelligible; and my; meaning is, that any state of action or passion implies previous; action or passion. It does not become because it is becoming, but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes; neither; does it suffer because it is in a state of suffering, but it is in a; state of suffering because it suffers. Do you not agree?"

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

"Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?"

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

"I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them."

"I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. ...I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect--for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects."

"To move the world we must move ourselves."