C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Plato
A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.
A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers.
Abstinence is the surety of temperance.
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.
All men, well interrogated, answer well.
All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.
As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.
As the government is, such will be the man.
Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.
Books are the immortal sons deifying their sires.
Do not, then, train boys to learning by force and harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be the better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
Do thine own work, and know thyself.
Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.
Even God is said to be unable to use force against necessity.
Evils***can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the Gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature and this mortal sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise.
For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretended knowledge of the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance?
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.
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 truth, and light His shadow.
Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.
Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude.
He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
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.
It is better to be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune.
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.
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Let men of all ranks, whether they are successful or unsuccessful, whether they triumph or not—let them do their duty, and rest satisfied.
May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ!
Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.
Opinion is a medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
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.
Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
The cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved; so that he passes a wrong judgment on what is just, good and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself, or by another.
The god, men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect.
The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad.
The learning and knowledge that we have is at the most but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows to manhood, he will have to be perfected.
The most virtuous of all men is he that contents himself with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
The proud man is forsaken of God.
There are few men so obstinate in their atheism whom a pressing danger will not reduce to an acknowledgment of the divine power.
There are many arts among men, the knowledge of which is acquired bit by bit by experience. For it is experience that causeth our life to move forward by the skill we acquire, while want of experience subjects us to the effects of chance.
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.
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.
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.
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.
Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.
What was your dream?
It seemed to me that a woman in white raiment, graceful and fair to look upon, came towards me and calling me by name said:
On the third day, Socrates, thou shalt reach the coast of fertile Phthia.
When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.
Wisdom alone is a science of other sciences and of itself.