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

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

"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

"How many things can I do without?"

"Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god."

"Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively."

"Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle."

"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?"

"An unconsidered life is not one worth living."

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

"He who is not contended with what he has would not be contended with what he would like to have."

"Those who are hardest to love need it the most."

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, me to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better? Only God knows."

"We cannot live better than in seeking to become better."

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

"God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."

"There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse."

"Those who are hardest to love need it the most."

"Man's greatest privilege is the discussion of virtue."

"A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true."