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 · 28 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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.”

“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.”

“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”

“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”

“Let men of all ranks whether they are successful, or unsuccessful, whether they triumph or not; let them do their duty, and rest satisfied.”

“Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.”

“That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless”

“All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”

“No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.”

“It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.”

“In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.”

“Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.”

“It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.”

“To a good man nothing that happens is evil.”