If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap
by 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

Related topics: Sad Feeling-Down Gratitude Positive

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- Socrates

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

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

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

He is richest who is content with the least.
- 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

Be as you wish to seem.
- Socrates

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

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

The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wisdom begins in wonder.
- 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

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

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

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

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

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

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
- 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

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

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

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

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

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes
is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others
shows that one's education is complete.
- Epictetus

Friendship is but another name for an alliance
with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
Our own share of miseries is sufficient:
why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
- Thomas Jefferson

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while
and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach

When you are in any contest,
you should work as if there were -
to the very last minute - a chance to lose it.
This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self,
can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Follow your bliss and doors will open
where there were no doors before.
- Joseph Campbell

The problems of the world cannot possibly
be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
- John F. Kennedy

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize
how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison

We act as though comfort and luxury
were the chief requirements of life,
when all that we need to make us really happy
is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Charles Kingsley

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die,
the world cries and you rejoice.
- Indian Proverb

Win as if you were used to it,
lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are those that look at things
the way they are, and ask "Why?"
I dream of things that never were, and ask "Why not?"
- Robert F. Kennedy paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw

While they were saying among themselves
it cannot be done, it was done.
- Helen Keller

Who were you before you put yourself last.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Hide not your talents,
they for use were made.
What's a sundial in the shade?
- Benjamin Franklin

Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson

All that is necessary to break the spell
of inertia and frustration is this:
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
- Dorthea Brande

So your father, or your mother,
never thought you were good enough - SO WHAT?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Half of everything you were ever taught is wrong;
the question is which half.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Look at everything as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
- Betty Smith

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true
were really true, there would be little hope of advance.
- Orville Wright

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