An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all.

We Athenians hold that it is not poverty that is disgraceful but the failure to struggle against it.

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.

For grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.

For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.

Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out, undeterred, to meet what is to come.