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.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

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.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

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.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

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.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Be as you wish to seem.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.