If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap
whence everyone must take an equal portion,
most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
- Socrates
Related topics: Sad Feeling-Down Gratitude Positive
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- Socrates 
Know thyself.
- Socrates (inscribed on the ancient Greek temple at Delphi)
He is richest who is content with the least,
for content is the wealth of nature.
- Socrates
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As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
- Socrates
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates
Ordinary people seem not to realize
that those who really apply themselves
in the right way to philosophy
are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death.
- Socrates
Be as you wish to seem.
- Socrates
The greatest way to live with honor in this world
is to be what we pretend to be.
- Socrates
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor
to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates
I cannot teach anybody anything.
I can only make them think.
- Socrates
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates
Not life, but good life,
is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates
The envious person grows lean
with the fatness of their neighbor.
- Socrates
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
- Socrates
One who is injured ought not to return the injury,
for on no account can it be right to do an injustice;
and it is not right to return an injury,
or to do evil to any man,
however much we have suffered from him.
- Socrates
The shortest and surest way to
live with honor in the world,
is to be in reality
what we would appear to be.
- Socrates
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates
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.
- Socrates
An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates
Wisdom begins in wonder.
- Socrates
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
- Socrates
Worthless people live only to eat and drink;
people of worth eat and drink only to live.
- Socrates
He is richest who is content with the least.
- Socrates
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
- Socrates
I know that I am intelligent,
because I know that I know nothing.
- Socrates
He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
- Socrates
If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man
take which course he will,
he will be sure to repent.
- Socrates
Be slow to fall into friendship;
but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
- Socrates
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
- Socrates
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.
- Socrates
Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
- Socrates
All men's souls are immortal,
but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
- Socrates
My advice to you is get married:
if you find a good wife you'll be happy;
if not, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings,
so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
- Socrates
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.
- Socrates
The end of life is to be like God,
and the soul following God will be like Him.
- Socrates
Envy is the ulcer of the soul.
- Socrates
Beauty is the bait which with delight
allures man to enlarge his kind.
- Socrates
I only wish that ordinary people
had an unlimited capacity for doing harm;
then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- Socrates
False words are not only evil in themselves,
but they infect the soul with evil.
- Socrates
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
- 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
The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
- Socrates
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
- Socrates
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes
is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others
shows that one's education is complete.
- Epictetus
Friendship is but another name for an alliance
with the follies and the misfortunes of others.
Our own share of miseries is sufficient:
why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
- Thomas Jefferson
The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while
and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach
All that is necessary to break the spell
of inertia and frustration is this:
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
- Dorthea Brande
Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Who were you before you put yourself last.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
So your father, or your mother,
never thought you were good enough - SO WHAT?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There are those that look at things
the way they are, and ask "Why?"
I dream of things that never were, and ask "Why not?"
- Robert F. Kennedy paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw
Half of everything you were ever taught is wrong;
the question is which half.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We act as though comfort and luxury
were the chief requirements of life,
when all that we need to make us really happy
is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Charles Kingsley
The problems of the world cannot possibly
be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
- John F. Kennedy
The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self,
can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
- Soren Kierkegaard
When you are in any contest,
you should work as if there were -
to the very last minute - a chance to lose it.
This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free
and realizing you were the prisoner!
- Max Lucado
Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die,
the world cries and you rejoice.
- Indian Proverb
You see things and you say, Why?
But I dream things that never were and say, Why not
- George Bernard Shaw
While they were saying among themselves
it cannot be done, it was done.
- Helen Keller
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
- Dorthea Brande
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize
how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
Look at everything as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
- Betty Smith
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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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