Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by your own nature is of all things most shameful and vile.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and culture.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

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

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.

There are two things a person should never be angry at: what they can help, and what they cannot.

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

A house that has a library in it has a soul.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

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

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

All learning has an emotional base.

Love is a serious mental disease.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem most respectable, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

Writing is the geometry of the soul.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.

The untrained mind is like a wild beast.

To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.

A state arises out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive; but great cleverness and much learning, if accompanied by a perverse upbringing, is a far greater evil.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

The mind is everything; what you think you become.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

True friendship can exist only between equals.

The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the opinion of truth, but with truth itself.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

The soul is in the body as a pilot in a ship.

To live a good life: We have the potential for it if we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

No human thing is of serious importance.

Excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul.

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

The god of love lives in a state of need.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

States are as the men are; they grow out of human characters.

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.

Love is the pursuit of the whole.

Democracy passes into despotism.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

The cure of the part should not be attempted without treatment of the whole.

There is truth in wine and children.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

The greatest penalty of evildoing is to grow into the likeness of bad men.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.

He who refuses to rule will be ruled by fools.

The craft of the ruler is not to look out for his own interest, but for the interest of the subject.

The right question is usually more important than the right answer.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

To be conquered by oneself is the greatest shame, but to conquer oneself is the greatest glory.

Nothing beautiful without struggle.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

He who has a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age.

Let us be brave, and the gods will fight on our side.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.