Socrates Quotes - Page 2

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.

God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods...

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

Two things greater than all the things are.On is love and the other is war.

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.

For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.

You are wrong sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong.

By means of beauty, all beautiful things become beautiful.

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.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

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

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.