If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.

Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

I never met a man who thought his thinking was faulty.

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.

The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.