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

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

Related topics: Values

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

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

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

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

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

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I 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

Be as you wish to seem.
- Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you 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

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

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- 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 unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates

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

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor
to be what you desire to appear.
- 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 know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
- Socrates

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

Wisdom begins in wonder.
- 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

He is richest who is content with the least.
- 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

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

An honest man is always a child.
- 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

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

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

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

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

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

Envy is the ulcer of the soul.
- Socrates

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

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
- Socrates

All men's souls are immortal,
but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
- 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 was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
- Socrates

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

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

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

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

Life is not supposed to be fair.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Edmund Hillary

The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
- Lao Tzu

Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.
- Erich Segal

I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship.
- Louisa May Alcott

Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
- Rabindranath Tagore

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
- Chinese Proverb

The mind is not a vessel to be filled
but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Do not blame the thistle that you see no beauty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson

To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

You do not need anyone's permission to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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