Pj > Pj's Quotes

“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
― Epicurus

“You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”
― Epicurus

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
― Epicurus

“The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.”
― Epicurus

“Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are.”
― Epicurus, Lettera sulla felicità

“do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not”
― Epicurus

“He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another.”
― Epicurus

“The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.”
― Epicurus

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
― Theophrastus

“Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.”
― Theophrastus

“We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.”
― Zeno of Citium, as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

“Time is the most valuable thing that a man can spend.”
― Diogenes

“The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.'

Said Diogenes, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king".”
― Anthony de Mello

“Man is the most intelligent of animals -- and the most silly.”
― Diogenes

“When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
― Plato

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
― Plato

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
― Plato, The Republic

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
― Richard Lingard, A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University Concerning His Behaviour and Conversation in the World

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
― Plato

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
― Plato

“There is truth in wine and children”
― Plato, Symposium / Phaedrus

“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
― Plato

“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”
― Plato

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
― Plato