For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

... the good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor.

And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases.

The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge.

The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.

Every man is a poet when he is in love.

We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.