classic_philosophy

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One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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All cruelty springs from weakness.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Life, if well lived, is long enough.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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You learn to know a pilot in a storm.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The wish for healing has always been half of health.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If you judge, investigate.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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All art is but imitation of nature.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No man was ever wise by chance.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Do everything as in the eye of another.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man... It is more powerful than external circumstances.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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While we are postponing, life speeds by.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If you would judge, understand.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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One must steer, not talk.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A man's as miserable as he thinks he is.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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In war there is no prize for runner-up.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If you wished to be loved, love.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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For greed all nature is too little.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Every guilty person is his own hangman.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.
Lu  ~ cius Annaeus Seneca
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We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He that does good to another does good also to himself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He who is brave is free.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Every reign must submit to a greater reign.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Life is warfare.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Time discovers truth.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A great mind becomes a great fortune.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He who has great power should use it lightly.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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One crime has to be concealed by another.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Where fear is, happiness is not.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A great fortune is a great slavery.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is no delight in owning anything unshared.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He has committed the crime who profits by it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Modesty forbids what the law does not.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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No one is laughable who laughs at himself.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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What is true belongs to me!
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Whatever is well said by another, is mine.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.
  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The safety of the people shall be the highest law.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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While there's life, there's hope.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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A friend is, as it were, a second self.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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A home without books is a body without soul.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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An unjust peace is better than a just war.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Laws are silent in time of war.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Whatever you do, do with all your might.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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More law, less justice.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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I criticize by creation - not by finding fault.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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What is permissible is not always honorable.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Sweet is the memory of past troubles.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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A man of courage is also full of faith.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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No sane man will dance.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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To live is to think.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Ability without honor is useless.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Thrift is of great revenue.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The magistrates are the ministers for the laws, the judges their interpreters, the rest of us are servants of the law, that we all may be free.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
A letter does not blush.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The spirit is the true self. The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The sinews of war are infinite money.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In time of war the laws are silent.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Honor is the reward of virtue.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Never injure a friend, even in jest.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The best interpreter of the law is custom.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
True nobility is exempt from fear.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Hatred is inveterate anger.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
It might be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently is nothing short of criminal.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Freedom is a man's natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nature abhors annihilation.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
No one can give you better advice than yourself.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Like associates with like.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Empire and liberty.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The good of the people is the greatest law.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Peace is liberty in tranquillity.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
People do not understand what a great revenue economy is.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Before beginning, plan carefully.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Hatred is settled anger.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
To some extent I liken slavery to death.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
In doubtful cases the more liberal interpretation must always be preferred.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
No obligation to do the impossible is binding.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Every man's reputation proceeds from those of his own household.
  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
  ~ Aristotle
%
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
  ~ Aristotle
%
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
  ~ Aristotle
%
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
  ~ Aristotle
%
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
  ~ Aristotle
%
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Man is by nature a political animal.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A friend to all is a friend to none.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The secret to humor is surprise.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The soul never thinks without a picture.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Friendship is essentially a partnership.
  ~ Aristotle
%
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We make war that we may live in peace.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
  ~ Aristotle
%
All men by nature desire knowledge.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Education is the best provision for old age.
  ~ Aristotle
%
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
  ~ Aristotle
%
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.
  ~ Aristotle
%
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
  ~ Aristotle
%
He who hath many friends hath none.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
  ~ Aristotle
%
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Well begun is half done.
  ~ Aristotle
%
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
  ~ Aristotle
%
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Wit is educated insolence.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Nature does nothing in vain.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The gods too are fond of a joke.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
  ~ Aristotle
%
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
  ~ Aristotle
%
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
  ~ Aristotle
%
For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
  ~ Aristotle
%
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
  ~ Aristotle
%
In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Hope is a waking dream.
  ~ Aristotle
%
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Change in all things is sweet.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
  ~ Aristotle
%
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
  ~ Aristotle
%
No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
  ~ Aristotle
%
No one loves the man whom he fears.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
  ~ Aristotle
%
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.
  ~ Aristotle
%
To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Bad men are full of repentance.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Most people would rather give than get affection.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The law is reason, free from passion.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects - things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language - either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
  ~ Aristotle
%
To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
  ~ Aristotle
%
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Law is mind without reason.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
  ~ Aristotle
%
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
  ~ Aristotle
%
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
  ~ Aristotle
%
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
  ~ Aristotle
%
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.
  ~ Aristotle
%
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.
  ~ Aristotle
%
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
  ~ Aristotle
%
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
  ~ Aristotle
%
No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
  ~ Aristotle
%
For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
  ~ Aristotle
%
A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
  ~ Aristotle
%
The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.
  ~ Aristotle
%
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
  ~ Plato
%
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
  ~ Plato
%
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
  ~ Plato
%
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
  ~ Plato
%
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
  ~ Plato
%
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
  ~ Plato
%
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
  ~ Plato
%
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
  ~ Plato
%
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
  ~ Plato
%
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
  ~ Plato
%
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
  ~ Plato
%
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
  ~ Plato
%
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
  ~ Plato
%
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
  ~ Plato
%
Love is a serious mental disease.
  ~ Plato
%
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
  ~ Plato
%
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
  ~ Plato
%
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
  ~ Plato
%
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
  ~ Plato
%
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
  ~ Plato
%
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
  ~ Plato
%
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
  ~ Plato
%
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
  ~ Plato
%
Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
  ~ Plato
%
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
  ~ Plato
%
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
  ~ Plato
%
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
  ~ Plato
%
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
  ~ Plato
%
Life must be lived as play.
  ~ Plato
%
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
  ~ Plato
%
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
  ~ Plato
%
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
  ~ Plato
%
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
  ~ Plato
%
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
  ~ Plato
%
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
  ~ Plato
%
Man - a being in search of meaning.
  ~ Plato
%
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
  ~ Plato
%
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
  ~ Plato
%
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
  ~ Plato
%
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.
  ~ Plato
%
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
  ~ Plato
%
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
  ~ Plato
%
There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
  ~ Plato
%
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
  ~ Plato
%
Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
  ~ Plato
%
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
  ~ Plato
%
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
  ~ Plato
%
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
  ~ Plato
%
The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
  ~ Plato
%
To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.
  ~ Plato
%
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
  ~ Plato
%
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
  ~ Plato
%
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
  ~ Plato
%
Democracy passes into despotism.
  ~ Plato
%
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
  ~ Plato
%
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
  ~ Plato
%
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
  ~ Plato
%
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
  ~ Plato
%
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
  ~ Plato
%
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
  ~ Plato
%
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
  ~ Plato
%
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
  ~ Plato
%
The wisest have the most authority.
  ~ Plato
%
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
  ~ Plato
%
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
  ~ Plato
%
Knowledge is true opinion.
  ~ Plato
%
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
  ~ Plato
%
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
  ~ Plato
%
Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.
  ~ Plato
%
We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
  ~ Plato
%
The good is the beautiful.
  ~ Plato
%
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
  ~ Plato
%
To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.
  ~ Plato
%
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
  ~ Plato
%
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
  ~ Plato
%
Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.
  ~ Plato
%
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
  ~ Plato
%
It is right to give every man his due.
  ~ Plato
%
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
  ~ Plato
%
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.
  ~ Plato
%
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
  ~ Plato
%
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
  ~ Plato
%
Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.
  ~ Plato
%
Courage is a kind of salvation.
  ~ Plato
%
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
  ~ Plato
%
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
  ~ Plato
%
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
  ~ Plato
%
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
  ~ Plato
%
They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
  ~ Plato
%
The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
  ~ Plato
%
Philosophy is the highest music.
  ~ Plato
%
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
  ~ Plato
%
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
  ~ Plato
%
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
  ~ Plato
%
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
  ~ Plato
%
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
  ~ Plato
%
I would fain grow old learning many things.
  ~ Plato
%
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
  ~ Plato
%
The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out.
  ~ Plato
%
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
  ~ Plato
%
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
  ~ Plato
%
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
  ~ Plato
%
There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
  ~ Plato
%
Necessity... the mother of invention.
  ~ Plato
%
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
  ~ Plato
%
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
  ~ Plato
%
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
  ~ Plato
%
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
  ~ Plato
%
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.
  ~ Plato
%
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
  ~ Plato
%
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
  ~ Plato
%
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
  ~ Plato
%
It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
  ~ Plato
%
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
  ~ Plato
%
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
  ~ Plato
%
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
  ~ Plato
%
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
  ~ Plato
%
Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.
  ~ Plato
%
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
  ~ Plato
%
All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.
  ~ Plato
%
Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.
  ~ Plato
%
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
  ~ Plato
%
Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.
  ~ Plato
%
Science is nothing but perception.
  ~ Plato
%
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
  ~ Plato
%
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
  ~ Plato
%
Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.
  ~ Plato
%
To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.
  ~ Plato
%
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
  ~ Plato
%
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.
  ~ Plato
%
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
  ~ Plato
%
One man cannot practice many arts with success.
  ~ Plato
%
To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
  ~ Plato
%
Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.
  ~ Plato
%
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
  ~ Plato
%
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
  ~ Plato
%
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
  ~ Plato
%
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
  ~ Plato
%
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
  ~ Plato
%
There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.
  ~ Plato
%
Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.
  ~ Plato
%
He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
  ~ Plato
%
Philosophy begins in wonder.
  ~ Plato
%
A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
  ~ Plato
%
When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.
  ~ Plato
%
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
  ~ Plato
%
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
  ~ Plato
%
The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.
  ~ Plato
%
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
  ~ Socrates
%
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
  ~ 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 know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
  ~ Socrates
%
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
  ~ Socrates
%
Be as you wish to seem.
  ~ Socrates
%
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
  ~ Socrates
%
The unexamined life is not worth living.
  ~ Socrates
%
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.
  ~ Socrates
%
An honest man is always a child.
  ~ Socrates
%
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
  ~ Socrates
%
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
  ~ Socrates
%
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
  ~ Socrates
%
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
  ~ Socrates
%
Wisdom begins in wonder.
  ~ Socrates
%
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
  ~ Socrates
%
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
  ~ Socrates
%
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
  ~ Socrates
%
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
  ~ Socrates
%
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
  ~ 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
%
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
%
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
  ~ Socrates
%
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
  ~ Socrates
%
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
  ~ Socrates
%
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
  ~ Socrates
%
All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
  ~ Socrates
%
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
  ~ Socrates
%
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
  ~ Socrates
%
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
  ~ Socrates
%
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
  ~ 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
%
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
%
Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
  ~ 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
%
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
%
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
  ~ Socrates
%
The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
  ~ Socrates
%
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
  ~ Socrates
%
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
  ~ 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
%
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
%
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
  ~ Socrates
%
There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Silence is better than unmeaning words.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
The oldest, shortest words - 'yes' and 'no' - are those which require the most thought.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Virtue is harmony.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
A thought is an idea in transit.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Reason is immortal, all else mortal.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Above all things, reverence yourself.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Strength of mind rests in sobriety; for this keeps your reason unclouded by passion.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Beans have a soul.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Do not talk a little on many subjects, but much on a few.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Begin thus from the first act, and proceed; and, in conclusion, at the ill which thou hast done, be troubled, and rejoice for the good.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.
  ~ Pythagoras
%
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Each day provides its own gifts.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Confine yourself to the present.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Poverty is the mother of crime.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Men exist for the sake of one another.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Anger cannot be dishonest.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Be content to seem what you really are.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Where a man can live, he can also live well.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.
  ~ Marcus Aurelius
%
Wellbeing is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.
  ~ Citium Zeno
%
No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
  ~ Citium Zeno
%
Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on.
  ~ Citium Zeno
%
The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
  ~ Epictetus
%
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
  ~ Epictetus
%
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
  ~ Epictetus
%
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
  ~ Epictetus
%
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Silence is safer than speech.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
  ~ Epictetus
%
We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.
  ~ Epictetus
%
When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
  ~ Epictetus
%
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
%
Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
  ~ Epictetus
%
No man is free who is not master of himself.
  ~ Epictetus
%
It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.
  ~ Epictetus
%
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Only the educated are free.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?
  ~ Epictetus
%
It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
  ~ Epictetus
%
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
  ~ Epictetus
%
It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
  ~ Epictetus
%
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.
  ~ Epictetus
%
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
  ~ Epictetus
%
God has entrusted me with myself.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
  ~ Epictetus
%
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
  ~ Epictetus
%
All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
  ~ Epictetus
%
You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.
  ~ Epictetus
%
We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.
  ~ Epictetus
%
No great thing is created suddenly.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If you wish to be a writer, write.
  ~ Epictetus
%
It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.
  ~ Epictetus
%
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.
  ~ Epictetus
%
There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
  ~ Epictetus
%
All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
  ~ Epictetus
%
The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.
  ~ Epictetus
%
You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.
  ~ Epictetus
%
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Freedom is the right to live as we wish.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.
  ~ Epictetus
%
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.
  ~ Epictetus
%
He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.
  ~ Epictetus
%
One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
  ~ Epictetus
%
If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.
  ~ Epictetus
%
Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.
  ~ Epictetus
%
We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
  ~ Epictetus
%
I myself think that the wise man meddles little or not at all in affairs and does his own things.
  ~ Chrysippus
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The anchovy which is found in the sea at Athens, men despise on account of its abundance and say that it is a poor man's fish; but in other cities, they prize it above everything, even where it is far inferior to the Attic anchovy.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
If something were brought about without an antecedent cause, it would be untrue that all things come about through fate. But if it is plausible that all events have an antecedent cause, what ground can be offered for not conceding that all things come about through fate?
  ~ Chrysippus
%
If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
There is a certain head, and that head you have not. Now this being so, there is a head which you have not; therefore, you are without a head.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
When through the power of sight we see white, that which comes about in the soul through the act of seeing is a modification. And on the basis of this modification, we are able to say that the white which is affecting us exists.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Of causes, some are complete and primary, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence, when we say that all things come about through fate by antecedent causes, we do not mean this to be understood as 'by complete and primary causes,' but 'by auxiliary and proximate causes.'
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unraveling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Death is the separation of soul from body.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
The soul is joined to and is separated from the body. Therefore, the soul is corporeal.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Although it is true that by fate all things are forced and linked by a necessary and dominant reason, nevertheless the character of our minds is subject to fate in a manner corresponding to their nature and quality.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
If our minds were originally formed by nature in a sound and useful manner, then they pass on all the forces of fate, which imposes on us from outside in a relatively unobjectionable and more acceptable way.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Vice, by comparison with terrible accidents, has its own peculiar explanation. For, in a way, it does occur in accordance with the rationale of nature, and its occurrence is not, so to speak, useless in relation to the whole world. For otherwise, the good would not exist, either.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Vice cannot be removed completely, nor is it right that it should be removed.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Every animal is related to its own constitution and the consciousness of it.
  ~ Chrysippus
%
Of all possessions a friend is the most precious.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
  ~ Herodotus
%
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
  ~ Herodotus
%
If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
  ~ Herodotus
%
If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
  ~ Herodotus
%
God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The gods love to punish whatever is greater than the rest.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Force has no place where there is need of skill.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
  ~ Herodotus
%
In soft regions are born soft men.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
  ~ Herodotus
%
I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
  ~ Herodotus
%
He is the best man who, when making his plans, fears and reflects on everything that can happen to him, but in the moment of action is bold.
  ~ Herodotus
%
It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The destiny of man is in his own soul.
  ~ Herodotus
%
All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
  ~ Herodotus
%
One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.
  ~ Herodotus
%
As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.
  ~ Herodotus
%
How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
  ~ Herodotus
%
But I like not these great success of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Men's fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.
  ~ Herodotus
%
A man calumniated is doubly injured - first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Great things are won by great dangers.
  ~ Herodotus
%
It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
  ~ Herodotus
%
The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.
  ~ Herodotus
%
There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.
  ~ Herodotus
%
When a woman removes her garment, she also removes the respect that is hers.
  ~ Herodotus
%
I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.
  ~ Herodotus
%
To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Whatever comes from God is impossible for a man to turn back.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Many exceedingly rich men are unhappy, but many middling circumstances are fortunate.
  ~ Herodotus
%
It's impossible for someone who is human to have all good things together, just as there is no single country able to provide all good things for itself.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Do you see how the god always hurls his bolts at the greatest houses and the tallest trees. For he is wont to thwart whatever is greater than the rest.
  ~ Herodotus
%
Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.
  ~ Euripides
%
To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
  ~ Euripides
%
One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
  ~ Euripides
%
Silence is true wisdom's best reply.
  ~ Euripides
%
Youth is the best time to be rich, and the best time to be poor.
  ~ Euripides
%
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
  ~ Euripides
%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
  ~ Euripides
%
Life has no blessing like a prudent friend.
  ~ Euripides
%
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
  ~ Euripides
%
The greatest pleasure of life is love.
  ~ Euripides
%
The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
  ~ Euripides
%
Danger gleams like sunshine to a brave man's eyes.
  ~ Euripides
%
No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
  ~ Euripides
%
Much effort, much prosperity.
  ~ Euripides
%
The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
  ~ Euripides
%
When a man's stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.
  ~ Euripides
%
Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.
  ~ Euripides
%
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
  ~ Euripides
%
No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
  ~ Euripides
%
Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand.
  ~ Euripides
%
Leave no stone unturned.
  ~ Euripides
%
Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails.
  ~ Euripides
%
There is the sky, which is all men's together.
  ~ Euripides
%
There is just one life for each of us: our own.
  ~ Euripides
%
Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.
  ~ Euripides
%
Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.
  ~ Euripides
%
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
  ~ Euripides
%
I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.
  ~ Euripides
%
He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.
  ~ Euripides
%
One does nothing who tries to console a despondent person with word. A friend is one who aids with deeds at a critical time when deeds are called for.
  ~ Euripides
%
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
  ~ Euripides
%
The bold are helpless without cleverness.
  ~ Euripides
%
To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man.
  ~ Euripides
%
Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass.
  ~ Euripides
%
No one who lives in error is free.
  ~ Euripides
%
Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
  ~ Euripides
%
'Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore.
  ~ Euripides
%
Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes.
  ~ Euripides
%
Down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love.
  ~ Euripides
%
He is not a lover who does not love forever.
  ~ Euripides
%
Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
  ~ Euripides
%
Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.
  ~ Euripides
%
Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
  ~ Euripides
%
Impudence is the worst of all human diseases.
  ~ Euripides
%
Joint undertakings stand a better chance when they benefit both sides.
  ~ Euripides
%
Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.
  ~ Euripides
%
Prosperity is full of friends.
  ~ Euripides
%
Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment.
  ~ Euripides
%
Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far.
  ~ Euripides
%
It's not beauty but fine qualities, my girl, that keep a husband.
  ~ Euripides
%
Do not consider painful what is good for you.
  ~ Euripides
%
The best of seers is he who guesses well.
  ~ Euripides
%
Authority is never without hate.
  ~ Euripides
%
Better a serpent than a stepmother!
  ~ Euripides
%
Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.
  ~ Euripides
%
Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy.
  ~ Euripides
%
The lucky person passes for a genius.
  ~ Euripides
%
In misfortune, which friend remains a friend?
  ~ Euripides
%
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.
  ~ Euripides
%
Cleverness is not wisdom.
  ~ Euripides
%
Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.
  ~ Euripides
%
The wavering mind is but a base possession.
  ~ Euripides
%
There is something in the pang of change More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness.
  ~ Euripides
%
New faces have more authority than accustomed ones.
  ~ Euripides
%
No one is happy all his life long.
  ~ Euripides
%
God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.
  ~ Euripides
%
But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.
  ~ Euripides
%
Some wisdom you must learn from one who's wise.
  ~ Euripides
%
The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage.
  ~ Thucydides
%
We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.
  ~ Thucydides
%
We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
  ~ Thucydides
%
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
  ~ Thucydides
%
History is Philosophy teaching by example.
  ~ Thucydides
%
The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.
  ~ Thucydides
%
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.
  ~ Thucydides
%
We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.
  ~ Thucydides
%
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
A man may learn wisdom even from a foe.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
High thoughts must have high language.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Let each man exercise the art he knows.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
The wise learn many things from their enemies.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Under every stone lurks a politician.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Evil events from evil causes spring.
  ~ Aristophanes
%
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
  ~ Aristophanes
%
As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.
  ~ Antisthenes
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There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself - an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
Not to unlearn what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
Quarrels often arise in marriages when the bridal gifts are excessive.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
I am sadly afraid that I must have done some wicked thing.
  ~ Antisthenes
%
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
  ~ Anacharsis
%
The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, and the fourth for madness.
  ~ Anacharsis
%
Wise men argue causes; fools decide them.
  ~ Anacharsis
%
Play so that you may be serious.
  ~ Anacharsis
%
Every man is his own chief enemy.
  ~ Anacharsis
%
The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.
  ~ Diogenes
%
When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?
  ~ Diogenes
%
Blushing is the color of virtue.
  ~ Diogenes
%
What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Modesty is the color of virtue.
  ~ Diogenes
%
In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Stand a little less between me and the sun.
  ~ Diogenes
%
He has the most who is most content with the least.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
  ~ Diogenes
%
It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The vine bears three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of intoxication, the third of disgust.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.
  ~ Diogenes
%
As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.
  ~ Diogenes
%
There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?
  ~ Diogenes
%
A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The great thieves lead away the little thief.
  ~ Diogenes
%
The mob is the mother of tyrants.
  ~ Diogenes
%
We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Calumny is only the noise of madmen.
  ~ Diogenes
%
It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Man is the most intelligent of the animals - and the most silly.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.
  ~ Diogenes
%
No man is hurt but by himself.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.
  ~ Diogenes
%
Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.
  ~ Diogenes
%
I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.
  ~ Diogenes
%
It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.
  ~ Diogenes
%