Quotes by Socrates

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- Socrates

Related topics: Wisdom Values

He is richest who is content with the least,
for content is the wealth of nature.
- Socrates

Know thyself.
- Socrates (inscribed on the ancient Greek temple at Delphi)

Be as you wish to seem.
- Socrates

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
- Socrates

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.
- Socrates

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
- Socrates

Worthless people live only to eat and drink;
people of worth eat and drink only to live.
- Socrates

One who is injured ought not to return the injury,
for on no account can it be right to do an injustice;
and it is not right to return an injury,
or to do evil to any man,
however much we have suffered from him.
- Socrates

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The envious person grows lean
with the fatness of their neighbor.
- Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.
- Socrates

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

Not life, but good life,
is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates

The shortest and surest way to
live with honor in the world,
is to be in reality
what we would appear to be.
- Socrates

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.
- Socrates

I know that I am intelligent,
because I know that I know nothing.
- Socrates

He is richest who is content with the least.
- Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
- Socrates

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

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

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates

I cannot teach anybody anything.
I can only make them think.
- Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship;
but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
- Socrates

If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates

An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates

He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
- Socrates

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

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.
- Socrates

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.
- Socrates

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

All men's souls are immortal,
but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
- Socrates

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
- Socrates

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

False words are not only evil in themselves,
but they infect the soul with evil.
- Socrates

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

Envy is the ulcer of the soul.
- Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
- Socrates

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
- Socrates

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.
- Socrates

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

My advice to you is get married:
if you find a good wife you'll be happy;
if not, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
- Socrates

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.
- Socrates

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
- Socrates

Beauty is the bait which with delight
allures man to enlarge his kind.
- Socrates

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,
and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind -
A Mind is Only Useful When Tamed..
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Beware, lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
- Aesop

O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which
doth mock the meat it feeds on.
- William Shakespeare

Beware of false knowledge;
it is more dangerous than ignorance.
- George Bernard Shaw

When life is too easy for us, we must beware
or we may not be ready to meet the blows
which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... Don't Let It Poison Your Day.
Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... the Antidote is Perspective.
Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
... Your Mind is Only Useful When Tamed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

NECESSITY and URGENCY are twin poisons of our rattlesnake minds.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

TIME is poisonous construct of our rattlesnake minds.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

TIME is yet another poisonous construct
of our rattlesnake minds.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You are not your mind. You, a Spiritual BEing,
are neither your mind nor your body.
Mind and body are your tools - to use as you choose.
Sometimes your body appears to have a will of its own,
as when it twitches or pains.
Likewise, your mind often appears to have its own will.
That incessant chattering of regret, disappointment, guilt,
shame, foreboding, worry, and fear
is your Rattlesnake Mind striking off on its own.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Necessity is the mother of invention.
- Proverb

Necessity never made a good bargain.
- Benjamin Franklin

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today;
it is rather the vital necessity of action today
to ensure our strength tomorrow.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is One Infinite Mind,
which of necessity includes all that is,
whether it be the intelligence in man,
the life in the animal,
or the invisible Presence which is God.
- Ernest Holmes

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
- Henry David Thoreau

The creation of something new
is not accomplished by the intellect
but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
- Carl Jung

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies;
they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.
It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- Albert Einstein

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie