Quote collection
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"Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?"
"There is yet something remaining for the dead, and some far better thing for the good than for the evil."
"The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another."
"Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?"
"Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence."
"A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods."
"Arguments, like men, are often pretenders."
"When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect."
"Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men."
"Do thine own work, and know thyself."
"For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."
"For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him."
"Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here."
"To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue."
"Everything changes and nothing remains still."
"Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants and desires the good."
"He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing."
"I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse."
"Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole."
"Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine: A tenth is Sappho, maid divine."