.. We admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul existed before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?
Socrates
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
people power
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
misfortune people
Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
rights philosophy people death deathanddying
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
life wisdom
.. The true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he is ever pursuing death and dying; and if this is true, why, having had the desire of death all his life long, should he repine at that which he has always been pursuing and desiring?
philosophy life men death deathanddying
birth life death deathanddying
Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are.
life
And when you see a man who is repining at the approach of death, is not his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body, and probably at the same time a lover of either money or power, or both?
proof life wisdom money man power death thetimes time
I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say.
poetry inspiration life wisdom nature
If generation were in a straight line only, and there were no compensation or circle in nature, no turn or return into one another, then you know that all things would at last have the same form and pass into the same state, and there would be no more generation of them.
compensation circles nature
.. Then we were speaking of opposites in the concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as is affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance with itself.. These essetial opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of generation into or out of one another.
nature
You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
death
.. Either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or if at all, after death. For then, and not til then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the body.
.. Do not courageous men endure death because they are afraid of yet greater evils?.. Then all but philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.
man men death
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