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I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.
Socrates -
There is no illness of the body except for the mind.
Socrates
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The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it.......Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.
Socrates -
Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.
Socrates -
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
Socrates -
I call that man idle who might be better employed.
Socrates -
The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
Socrates -
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
Socrates
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One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.
Socrates -
Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.
Socrates -
My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves.
Socrates -
For who is there but you? - who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.
Socrates -
Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile?
Socrates -
Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.
Socrates
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I am quite ready to acknowledge . . . that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good, and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead.
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 -
The tongue of a fool is the key of his counsel, which, in a wise man, wisdom hath in keeping.
Socrates -
Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.
Socrates -
Antiphon, as another man gets pleasure from a good horse, or a dog, or a bird, I get even more pleasure from good friends. And if I have something good, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect to virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be a great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another.
Socrates -
How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?
Socrates
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I am a Citizen of the World, and my Nationality is Goodwill.
Socrates -
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
Socrates -
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
Socrates -
And the same things look bent and straight when seen in water and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the sight's being mislead by the colors, and every sort of confusion of this kind is plainly in our soul. And, then, it is because they take advantage of this affection in our nature that shadow painting, and puppeteering, and many other tricks of the kind fall nothing short of wizardry.
Socrates