"Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued."

"An unconsidered life is not one worth living."

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

"For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles."

"Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults."

"Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity."

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less."

"As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent."

"I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. ...I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect--for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects."

"I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?"

"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be."

"And now we go, you to your lives, and I to death, and which of us goes to the better only God knows"

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."

"Through your rags I see your vanity."

"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean."

"If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality."

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

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."

"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher ... and that is a good thing for any man."