Quotes About Philosophy

As if you had died and your life had extended only to this present moment, use the surplus that is left to you to live from this time onward according to nature.

Be modest and simple in your deportment, and treat with indifference whatever lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race; obey God.

Death and pain are not frightening, it's the fear of pain and death we need to fear. Which is why we praise the poet who wrote, 'Death is not fearful, but dying like a coward is.'

Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back.

Do as Socrates did, never replying to the question of where he was from with, 'I am Athenian,' or 'I am from Corinth,' but always, 'I am a citizen of the world.'

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon.

Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune".

No man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live.

Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

Shall any man hate me? That will be his affair. But I will be mild and benevolent toward every man, and ready to show even him his mistake, not reproachfully, nor yet as making a display of my endurance, but nobly and honestly.

Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it's gone.

To be sure, external things of whatever kind require skill in their use, but we must not grow attached to them; whatever they are, they should only serve for us to show how skilled we are in our handling of them.

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

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act in the right way.

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.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.

The act of dying is also one of the acts of life.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'