Biographers

"He used to say that it was better to have one friend of great value than many friends who were good for nothing."

"Anarcharsis, on learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, said that "the passengers were just that distance from death.""

"He used to say that other men lived to eat, but that he ate to live."

"Being asked whether it was better to marry or not, he replied, "Whichever you do, you will repent it.""

"He declared that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance."

"He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance."

"Socrates said, "Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods.""

"Often when he was looking on at auctions he would say, "How many things there are which I do not need!""

"Aristophanes turns Socrates into ridicule in his comedies, as making the worse appear the better reason."

"The saying, "Practice is everything," is Periander’s."

"Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words."

"Bias used to say that men ought to calculate life both as if they were fated to live a long and a short time, and that they ought to love one another as if at a future time they would come to hate one another; for that most men were bad."

"Another was, "Watch your opportunity.""

"One of his sayings was, "Even the gods cannot strive against necessity.""

"Heraclitus says that Pittacus, when he had got Alcæus into his power, released him, saying, "Forgiveness is better than revenge.""

"Pittacus said that half was more than the whole."

"Chilo advised, "not to speak evil of the dead.""

"As some say, Solon was the author of the apophthegm, "Nothing in excess.""

"Solon gave the following advice: "Consider your honour, as a gentleman, of more weight than an oath. Never tell a lie. Pay attention to matters of importance.""

"Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions;... that laws were like cobwebs,—for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off."

"Writers differ with respect to the apophthegms of the Seven Sages, attributing the same one to various authors."

"The apophthegm "Know thyself" is his."

"He said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as those who were present."

"When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one’s self." And what was easy, "To advise another.""

"Alcæus mentions Aristodemus in these lines:— ’T is money makes the man; and he who ’s none Is counted neither good nor honourable."

"Thales said there was no difference between life and death. "Why, then," said some one to him, "do not you die?" "Because," said he, "it does make no difference.""

"Just step aside for me to enjoy the sunshine."

"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more."

"Fortune is unstable, while our will is free."

"He alludes to the appearance of a face in the orb of the moon."

"Epicurus laid down the doctrine that pleasure was the chief good."

"The chief good is the suspension of the judgment, which tranquillity of mind follows like its shadow."

"If appearances are deceitful, then they do not deserve any confidence when they assert what appears to them to be true."

"The mountains, too, at a distance appear airy masses and smooth, but seen near at hand, they are rough."

"Euripides says,— Who knows but that this life is really death, And whether death is not what men call life?"

"Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down.""

"Xenophanes speaks thus:— And no man knows distinctly anything, And no man ever will."

"Nothing can be produced out of nothing."

"Protagoras asserted that there were two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other."

"It takes a wise man to discover a wise man."

"Xenophanes was the first person who asserted... that the soul is a spirit."

"In the time of Pythagoras that proverbial phrase Ipse dixit was introduced into ordinary life."

"Among what he called his precepts were such as these: Do not stir the fire with a sword. Do not sit down on a bushel. Do not devour thy heart."

"He calls drunkenness an expression identical with ruin."

"Pythagoras used to say that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into all sorts of plants or animals."

"One of the sophisms of Chrysippus was, "If you have not lost a thing, you have it.""

"Apollodorus says, "If any one were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty.""

"But Chrysippus, Posidonius, Zeno, and Boëthus say, that all things are produced by fate. And fate is a connected cause of existing things, or the reason according to which the world is regulated."

"They also say that God is an animal immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil, having a foreknowledge of the universe and of all that is in the universe; however, that he has not the figure of a man; and that he is the creator of the universe, and as it were the Father of all things in common, and that a portion of him pervades everything."

"The Stoics also teach that God is unity, and that he is called Mind and Fate and Jupiter, and by many other names besides."