A reading library

Quotes

Passages worth returning to, drawn from many traditions and held under four foundations. Read slowly, or offer one of your own.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Four foundations

Every passage is held under one of four foundations. Follow a foundation to read only its quotations.

The disposition to question, and to keep questioning.

Wisdom is not held in the mind but shown in the life.

We come to know ourselves in the company of others.

The right ordering of things, in the soul and in the city.

Showing passages by SocratesClear

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

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

Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Confine yourself to the present.

It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophise.

The unexamined life is not worth living.