"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."

"Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant."

"I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."

"May the inward and outward man be as one."

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

"My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth."

"Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?"

"I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them."

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

"Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant."

"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms."

"If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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