Great Throughts Treasury

"As there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all...The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them."

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

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy."

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

"Be of good cheer about death and know this as a truth-- that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

"Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle."

"At the time, I made it clear once again, not by talk but by action, that I didn't care at all about death ? if I'm not being too blunt to say it ? but it mattered everything that I do nothing unjust or impious, which matters very much to me. For though it had plenty of power, that government didn't frighten me into doing anything that's wrong."

"Be as you wish to seem."

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

"Be true to thine own self."

"Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods."

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity ? I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly."

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."

"But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God."

"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"Before the birth of Love, many fearful things took place through the empire of necessity; but when this god was born, all things rose to men."

"But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth exists only in bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts?the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy?do you suppose that such a soul as this will depart pure and unalloyed?"

"But what's judgment deepen least based on the hope of a good death count. indeed, one of two things is to be dead: or is akin to not be at all, and then the dead he has no feeling for anything, or is it, as some say, only a change and a shift of soul from one place to another. And if the death is not no feeling, but a deep sleep so that when someone is asleep without even having a dream, when death appears as a great gain. For I reckon that if someone would choose a night when sleeping so well that it was troubled by a dream even if they then compare that night with all other nights and days of his life and, having examined them fully itself should say how many days and many nights of his life lived quieter and more pleasant than that night, thought not only a commoner, but the Great King himself would find that they are too few in number to other days and nights. If death is something I call it winning. For all eternity when there seems to be nothing but one clear night. But if death is the journey here and elsewhere, if true what is said, that he is the meeting place for all who have died, then what good might imagine greater than death, O judges me?"

"Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one."

"But when returning into herself she [the soul] reflects; then she passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom."

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

"By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and anyone else to give ? that by means of beauty beautiful things become beautiful."

"Call no man unhappy until he is married"

"Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?"

"Crito, Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Pay it and do not neglect it. [last words]"

"Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, "Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all?""

"Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty"

"Contentment is the real source of the biggest thrill."

"Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth."

"Democracy... would, it seems, be a delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!"

"Death is one of two things. Either death is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another. Now if there is no consciousness, but only a dreamless sleep, death must be a marvellous gain. If, on the other hand, death is a removal from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be than this, gentlemen? Put it this way: how much would one of you give to converse with Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. It would be a specially interesting experience for me to join them there, to meet Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who met their death through an unfair trial, and to compare my fortunes with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true."

"Death offers mankind a full view of truth."

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?"

"Do not courageous men endure death because they are afraid of yet greater evils?... Then all but philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing."

"Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others."

"Do you fear death, citizens, is nothing else than to imagine that you are wise without being mean to think you know what you know. Because nobody knows what death is and whether it's somehow highest good for man, but all fear it as if be sure it's the greatest evil. And this way of thinking as not just that despicable stupidity - of believing that you know what you know? I, however, Athenians, maybe just through this and at this point I differ from most (even if it would mean to say that one thing is wiser than another), namely that if you do not know much about the in Hades, I realize I do not know."

"Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, 'both you and your house."

"Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and, yet, take so little care of your own children, to whom one day you must relinquish all."

"Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show."

"Do you feel no compunction, Socrates, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death penalty?' I might fairly reply to him, 'You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action--that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one."

"Either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that on either view of the case you lie. If my offense is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offenses; you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally ? no doubt I should; whereas you hated to converse with me or teach me, but you indicted me in this court, which is the place not of instruction, but of punishment."

"Either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or if at all, after death. For then, and not til then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the body."

"Envy is the ulcer of the soul."

"Enjoy yourself - it's later than you think."

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

"Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?"

"Every action has its pleasures and its price."

"For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together for judgment, whence they go into the world below, following the guide who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other; and when they have received their due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages."

"Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit"