"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."

"Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them."

"The useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base."

"All learning is in the learner, not the teacher."

"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."

"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."

"The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another."

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue."

"All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance."

"The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death."

"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."

"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."

"Everyone thinks because it is solely responsible for the wisdom or folly of his life, that is to say of his destiny."

"Appearance tyrannizes over truth."

"All is flux, nothing stays still."

"Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls."

"Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been."

"Whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation."

"Character is simply habit long continued."