Socrates Quotes

128 Sourced Quotes

The end of life is to be like unto God; and the soul following God, will be like unto Him; He being the beginning, middle, and end of all things.

Socrates
If all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stack in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by such a division.

Socrates
Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good-will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.

Socrates
Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony and sensuality, go down and up again as far as the mean; and in this region they move at random throughout life, but they never pass into the true upper world; thither they neither look, nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they ever taste of pure and abiding pleasure.

Socrates
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.

Socrates
An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.

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

Socrates
Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.

Socrates