Quotessence
Home / Books / Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study

Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study

Book by Plato · 50 quotes · Men, Philosophical, Inspirational

Filter quotes by topic

Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study Quotes

“Hope is a waking dream.”

“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.”

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

“No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.”

“He who hath many friends hath none.”

“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.”

“It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.”

“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.”

“The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.”

“He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.”

“Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.”

“Beauty is a natural superiority.”

“The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.”

“Even God is said to be unable to use force against necessity.”

“Through obedience learn to command.”

“Abstinence is the surety of temperance.”

“No one finds fault with defects which are the result of nature.”

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

“Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.”

“God is a geometrician.”

“Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.”

“We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell.”

“There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.”

“A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.”

“It is proper for every one to consider, in the case of all men, that he who has not been a servant cannot become a praiseworthy master; and it is meet that we should plume ourselves rather on acting the part of a servant properly than that of the master, first, towards the laws, (for in this way we are servants of the gods), and next, towards our elders.”

“To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.”

“All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.”

“Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.”

“When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.”

“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.”

“Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors.”

“Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.”

“Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude.”

“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.”

“Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.”

“For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal.”

“Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.”

“It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.”

“Man is the metre of all things, the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms.”

“All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.”

“The best things are placed between extremes.”

“I believe that we cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than having a clear conscience.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Knowledge is our ultimate good.”

“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.”

“There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom.”

“Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.”

“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.”