All Quotes
2989 quotes in total
“The soul is the only thing that makes the body alive.”
“Knowledge is the only power that grows when shared.”
“The mathematician has to be a poet in soul.”
“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.”
“οὔκουν γέλως ἥδιστος εἰς ἐχθροὺς γελᾶν; And to mock at foes”
“ὡς ἡμέρα κλίνει τε κἀνάγει πάλιν ἅπαντα τἀνθρώπεια. For a day can humble all human beings, and a day can lift them up.”
“τῶν γὰρ μεγάλων ψυχῶν ἱεὶς οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοι· κατὰ δ᾿ ἄν τις ἐμοῦ τοιαῦτα λέγων οὐκ ἂν πείθοι. πρὸς γὰρ τὸν ἔχονθ᾿ ὁ φθόνος ἕρπει. καίτοι σμικροὶ μεγάλων χωρὶς σφαλερὸν πύργου ῥῦμα πέλονται. Yea, point thine arrow at a noble spirit, and thou shalt not miss; but should a man speak such things against me, he would win no faith. 'Tis on the powerful that envy creeps. Yet the small without the great can ill be trusted to guard the walls.”
“γύναι, γυναιξὶ κόσμον ἡ σιγὴ φέρει. Woman, silence graces woman.”
“Line 293 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1896) Woman, to women silence is the best ornament.”
“ἀλλ᾿ ἢ καλῶς ζῆν ἢ καλῶς τεθνηκέναι τὸν εὐγενῆ χρή. Nobly to live, or else nobly to die, Befits proud birth.”
“τῆς ἀναγκαίας τύχης οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν μεῖζον ἀνθρώποις κακόν. Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.”
“χάρις χάριν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τίκτουσ᾿ ἀεί· ὅτου δ᾿ ἀπορρεῖ μνῆστις εὖ πεπονθότος, οὐκ ἂν γένοιτ᾿ ἔθ᾿ οὗτος εὐγενὴς ἀνήρ. For kindness begets kindness evermore, But he from whose mind fades the memory Of benefits, noble is he no more.”
“ὦ παῖ, γένοιο πατρὸς εὐτυχέστερος, τὰ δ᾿ ἄλλ᾿ ὁμοῖος· καὶ γένοι᾿ ἂν οὐ κακός. Ah, son, may you prove luckier than your father, but in all else like him. Then you would not prove base.”
“ἐν τῷ φρονεῖν γὰρ μηδὲν ἥδιστος βίος. In knowing nothing is the sweetest life.”
“Foolish men who accuse women without reason, not seeing that you are the occasion of the very thing you blame”
“I don't study to know more, but to ignore less”
“If Aristotle had cooked, he would have written much more”
“Even knowledge grows tiresome when it is one's profession”
“Reason has never been an offense”
“He who listens and learns, it is only right that he should attend and be silent”
“It is not wisdom to be wise in vain discourse; true wisdom lies in choosing what is sound”
“The whole world is opinions, of such varied judgments, that what one calls black, another proves is white”
“Divine rose that in gentle culture, you are, with your fragrant subtlety, purple magistracy in beauty, snowy lesson to loveliness”
“Which is more to blame, though both may do wrong: she who sins for payment, or he who pays for sin?”
“The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can”
“It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution? Journal entry, August 1, 1835”
“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Journal entry, Gilleleie (1 August 1835) Journals 1A; this is considered to be one of the earliest statements of existentialist thought.”
“It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat”
“How close men, despite all their knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands on the outside, not until one lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate. (Dialectic”
“in order to see and observe,”