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

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

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.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

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

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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

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.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Be as you wish to seem.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

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.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

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

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

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

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

The unexamined life is not worth living.