Quotes to inspire and reflect

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

What we wish, that we readily believe.

No man who is not willing to help himself has any right to apply to his friends, or to the gods.

The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

To remind a man of the good turns you have done him is very much like a reproach.

As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.

It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new.

Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.

Men should strive to think much and know little.

Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.

Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.

Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.

It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Bad men are full of repentance.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.