"Socrates" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a starting-point. If Jesus was only a brave man, paying with His life the penalty of His bravery in the streets of Jerusalem, it is wasting words to call Him "the Saviour of the world." If His death were only a martyrdom, then, though we may honour Him as we honour Socrates, and many another name in the long roll of "the noble army of martyrs," yet He can no more be our Redeemer than can any one of them. But it was not so that Christ thought of His death. The martyr dies because he must; Christ died ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... poetry with rollicking humor and keen satirical point which is his chief characteristic. Here, as elsewhere, he stands for tradition against innovation of all kinds, whether in politics, religion, or art. The hostility to Euripides displayed here and in several other plays, like his attacks on Socrates, is a result of this attitude of conservatism. The present play is notable also as a piece of elaborate if not over-serious literary criticism from the pen of a ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... has always been considered supremely excellent advice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly is disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the Greeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort of self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... plagam Aethiopiae accipimus." Procopius brings the Nile into Egypt [Greek: ex Indon]; and the Ecclesiastical Historians Sozomen and Socrates (I take these citations, like the last, from Ludolf), in relating the conversion of the Abyssinians by Frumentius, speak of them only as of the [Greek: Indon ton endotero], "Interior Indians," a phrase intended to imply remoter, but ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... controls life and death; and if He is just, He sends death justly. Why, then, does Pomponia wear mourning for Julius? In mourning for Julius she blames her God. I must repeat this reasoning to our Bronzebeard, the monkey, since I consider that in dialectics I am the equal of Socrates. As to women, I agree that each has three or four souls, but none of them a reasoning one. Let Pomponia meditate with Seneca or Cornutus over the question of what their great Logos is. Let them summon ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "Socrates, who observed her with pleasure, said, 'This young girl has confirmed me in the opinion I have had, for a long time, that the female sex are nothing inferior to ours, excepting only in strength of body, or, perhaps, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... freely on his behalf. He gained by the event, also, in point of popularity, and more especially in France and America. Testimonials, condolences, and flattering compliments were sent to him from all quarters, and he was even compared to Galileo and Socrates! The event, in truth, had the effect of making him more bold in his advocacy of revolutionary principles. Both from the pulpit and the press he loudly denounced the bigotry of England, and as loudly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... same state in which they were at the commencement; in such a case, however interesting the conversation may be, it cannot be said to possess a dramatic interest. I shall make this clear by alluding to a more tranquil species of dialogue, not adapted for the stage, the philosophic. When, in Plato, Socrates asks the conceited sophist Hippias, what is the meaning of the beautiful, the latter is at once ready with a superficial answer, but is afterwards compelled by the ironical objections of Socrates to give up his former definition, and to grope about him for other ideas, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... not valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? The just Phocion, and the accomplished Socrates, put to death like traitors? The cruel Severus live prosperously? The excellent Severus miserably murdered? [Footnote: Of the two Severi, the earlier, who persecuted the Christians, was emperor 194-210; the later (Alexander), who favoured ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... dear to God, and famous to all ages." This might be done by reading to them aloud, from Greek or Latin, "some easy and delightful Book of Education" not yet accessible to themselves. "CEBES, [Footnote: The Pinax (Table) of CEBES of Thebes, a disciple of Socrates. "This Pinax is a philosophical explanation of a table on which the whole of human life, with its dangers and temptations, was symbolically represented, and which is said to have been dedicated by some one to the temple of Cronos at Athens or Thebes. The author ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Quakers. Hence the patriarchs were Quakers, that is, because they professed to be led by the Spirit of God. Hence the Apostles and primitive Christians were Quakers. Hence the virtuous among the Heathens, who knew nothing of Christianity, were Quakers also. Hence Socrates may be ranked in profession with the members of this society. He believed in the agency of the Divine Spirit. It was said of him, "that he had the guide of his life within him; that this spirit furnished him with ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... cementing their friendship; Sir John Falstaff lights his pipe at Bardolph's nose; whilst Romeo hands up a glass of something short and strong to his Juliet in the balcony. 1842 gives us the celebrated etching of "Gone!" an auctioneer "knocking down" a bust of Socrates; at the word "gone" the flooring gives way, and auctioneer, buyers, and Socrates, with all their surroundings, descend with a simultaneous crash into the cellars below. Drowning men catch at straws, and the spectacled visage of the auctioneer, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... received in both kinds and fasting, and the priest was forbidden to celebrate after taking any food; some exception to this rule may be inferred from a canon of the Second Council of Macon in 585 enforcing it, and the ecclesiastical historian Socrates (whose History extends from 306 to 439) states that some in Egypt did not receive "as the custom is among Christians," but after a meal. The presence of the Lord in the Eucharist was recognised and adored. [Sidenote: ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... from the surprise of this laceration, and adapt ourselves without loss of time to the new state of things which turns us into people as privileged as Socrates and the Christian martyrs and the men of the Revolution. We are learning to despise all in life that is merely temporary, and to delight in that which life so seldom yields: the love of those things that ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... forth, it simply comes to this—that the habits which were fashionable when the century was not yet in its teens, or just in them, were getting to be looked on askance when it was entering or had entered on its thirties. But, instead of being annoyed at this Socrates-Falstaff, as somebody has called it, one might have thought that both Hogg himself and his admirers would have taken it as an immense compliment. The only really bad turn that Wilson seems to have done his friend was posthumous and pardonable. He undertook the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... living reaction, if this belief is really and vividly enkindled with it. But take away this appropriative, individual element, and this legend of Jesus's death has no more power than any other. He is to us no more than Washington or Socrates, or Howard. And where is there not a touchstone to try every theory of atonement? Whatever makes a man feel that he is only a spectator, an uninterested judge in this matter, is surely astray from the idea of the Bible. Whatever makes him feel that his sins ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... according to the rites of their country by the suovetaurilia, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull. Tiridates did the same by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not mention the river god, but the river itself, as propitiated (see [Annals,] book vi, chap. 37).[3] Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer for making Achilles behave disrespectfully towards the river Xanthus, though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,[4] and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged god, in presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The Acharnians" and Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... excite little or no interest, and the digressions are apt to overlay the main thesis; there is not the 'callida junctura' of an artistic whole. Both the serious discussions and the jests are sometimes out of place. The invincible Socrates is withdrawn from view; and new foes begin to appear under old names. Plato is now chiefly concerned, not with the original Sophist, but with the sophistry of the schools of philosophy, which are making reasoning impossible; and is driven by them ...
— Statesman • Plato
... the tragic history of the race. In the ancient world Socrates sought to teach some new truths to the people, and they made him drink the fatal hemlock. It has been true all along the track of the ages. The men and women who have been in advance, who have had new ideas, new ideals, who have had the ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... even without the symbolic help of the daggers, had again found the complement of his own 'Alkibiadesian' individuality, this time in the young booby Hornstein, and it is very probable that the two, whilst in Sion, had imagined they were acting an 'Alkibiadesian' scene before Socrates. His comedy showed me that his artistic talent was fortunately far better than his society manners. To this day I regret that this decidedly difficult play has ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... he?" said the man. "His proper name is Socrates, though I call him Sox, for short. He is supposed to be getting on for a hundred years old, though as far as I can see he is just as young as he was when I first got him, twenty years ago. Here,"—handing us each a piece of meat—"give ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... ipsum crucis absit non modo a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus.' With other ancient heathens, however, the Egyptians, the Buddhists, and even the aborigines of Mexico, the cross seems to have been in use as a religious symbol. Socrates relates (H.E. v. 17) that at the destruction of the temple of Serapis, among the hieroglyphic inscriptions, forms of crosses were found which pagans and Christians alike referred to their respective religions. Some of the heathen converts, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... last; there have been long stretches of history during which humanity has seemed to mark time and then a sudden outburst of intellectual activity and moral achievement. It could hardly be maintained, for instance, that the Athens of Socrates was not superior to the France of Fulk the black of Anjou, or that the Assyria of Asshur-bani-pal was not quite as civilised as the Germany of the ninth century A.D. Alfred Russel Wallace has shown in his popular book, "The Wonderful Century," that the latter half of the nineteenth century ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... clothed me." Little did this noble-minded woman think that when she was entering her daily experience in her diary that her deeds of charity were to be brought to light after death. A story is told of Xenophon, the disciple of Socrates, that while offering a solemn sacrifice he heard that his eldest son was slain at Mantinea. He did not, however, desist, but only laid down his crown and asked how he had fallen. When he understood that his son had fallen in battle fighting bravely for his country, he calmly replaced ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... di Rafaello (so they are called) are several large fresco paintings, viz., one representing the battle of Maxentius and Constantine; another, the school of Athens and Socrates sitting among the other philosophers; a third representing ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... hills; that which was nearer to the city being lower than the other. "That city," said he, "is called Athens, the lower hill Parnassus, and the higher Helicon. They are so called, because in the city and around it dwell the wise men who formerly lived in Greece, as Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristippus, Xenophon, with their disciples and scholars." On my asking him concerning Plato and Aristotle, he said, "They and their followers dwell in another region, because they taught principles of rationality which relate to the understanding; whereas ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... a notion, Socrates couldn't convince them to the contrary. For instance, madam, all this morning they thought fit to assume that they ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a careful student of human nature. And never forget that he who has mastered this, the most abstruse of sciences, has a better equipment for practical success than all the abstract learning from the days of Socrates till ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... philosophers, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Socrates, Plato, Aspasia, and others, all of whom had glimpsed, if not fully attained, cosmic consciousness, we come to a consideration of those cases in our own day and age, in which this superior consciousness ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... hesitate to choose the former. In times of war and revolution that choice has been presented to men in every age and country: and men have always been found ready to choose the better part; death for country, rather than life apart from her. So deep was the conviction in the mind of Socrates that the laws of the state should be obeyed at all costs, that when he had been sentenced to death unjustly, and had an opportunity to escape the penalty by running away, he refused to do it on the ground that it was his duty to obey those laws which had made him what he was and whose protection ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread out for sale, he exclaimed: How much there is in the world ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... regard him as morally insane, and try my best to put him where he could do no more harm. But tell me why this protracted imitation of Socrates? Where are you trying to lead me? Do you want me to say that the German Kaiser is a very bad foreman of his shop; that he has got it into a horrible mess and made it despised and hated by all the other shops; that he ought to be put out? If that ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... Pliny described it as a Narce narcisswm dictum, non a fabuloso puero. An extract of the bulbs when applied to open wounds has produced staggering, numbness of the whole nervous system, and paralysis of the heart. Socrates called this plant the "Chaplet of the Infernal Gods," because of its [142] narcotic effects. Nevertheless, the roots of the asphodel were thought by the ancient Greeks to be edible, and they were therefore laid in tombs as food for the dead. Lucian ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... existence and necessity of this higher grace of the will in his controversy with the Pelagians. He was firmly convinced that a man may know the way of salvation, and yet refuse to follow it.(56) He insisted that mere knowledge is not virtue, as Socrates had ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... his times,—Philolaus, Timaeus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and what else; then his master, Socrates; and finding himself still capable of a larger synthesis,—beyond all example then or since,—he traveled into Italy, to gain what Pythagoras had for him; then into Egypt, and perhaps still further east, to import the other element, which ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the example of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous enterprise—into converting the miasma of a marsh ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... ground that he had just Planned a summer's tour through his own back yard. What did Agassiz find on that tour? Instruction for the children of many generations, a treatise on animal life, and later a text-book of Zoology. Kant, the philosopher, the greatest mind since Socrates, was never forty miles from his birthplace. On the other hand, Grant Allen, author, scholar, and traveler, says: "One year in the great university we call Europe, will teach one more than three at Yale or Columbia. And what it teaches one will be ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... theologians who deny all power to man's reason, and consider the understanding as a receiver which does nothing but receive the liquid which is poured into it? to those theologians who, not content with despising Aristotle and Plato, think themselves obliged to vilify Socrates and calumniate Regulus? We will tell them that they depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe themselves par excellence the representatives. We will add that they outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... which exceedingly questionable expression of goodwill on the part of Mr. Mould, is Mrs. Gamp's equally confiding outburst of philanthropy from her point of view, where she remarks—of course to her familiar, as Socrates when communing with his Daemon—"'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'don't name the charge, for if I could afford to lay my fellow-creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the Coffee-House of the Learned, the friend of Prince Lippe-Schaumberg, the King's own Protected Jew, in every line of whose countenance Lavater kept insisting the unprejudiced phrenologist might read the soul of Socrates. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... set on it, A. A.," he explained. "It's going to be a sorrel horse, you see,—with a blue tail and a red head. Mustard, hollyhocks and geraniums is what she's going to plant here when I get the bed fixed. Socrates,—he was the best horse I ever straddled,—he was a sorrel. I ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato, or—to speak plainer, and for the "people"—the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the Greek agora. The government carried on in them was a more or less qualified democracy. In the palmy days of Athens it was a pure democracy. The assemblies which in the Athenian market-place declared war against Syracuse, or condemned Socrates to death, were quite like New England town-meetings, except that they exercised greater powers because there was no ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... "the soul, which is an abstraction, a part of the Infinite and thus of God Himself, is therefore imperishable. Socrates taught this, Pantheism is based on this, the arguments of the Peripatetic Philosophers all trend to this belief, and Christ preached the Soul's immortality and life after death. Thus, if the Soul is immortal and cannot perish, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... not against the Latin, gods; but the evasion was tolerably transparent. Cato was, from his own point of view, quite right in assailing these tendencies indiscriminately, wherever they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even Socrates a corrupter of morals and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... expressed by it to be furnished by a milliner, a taylor, or a perriwig-maker; no, nor even by a dancing-master himself. According to the idea I myself conceive from this word, I should not have scrupled to call Socrates a well-bred man, though, I believe, he was very little instructed by any of the persons I have above enumerated. In short, by good-breeding (notwithstanding the corrupt use of the word in a very different sense) I mean the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... distinguished men would find his account in procuring their admission to the membership of learned bodies on the Continent,—a proceeding no whit more incongruous than the reversal of the judgment against Socrates, when he was already more than twenty centuries beyond the reach of antidotes, and when his memory had acquired a deserved respectability. I conceive that it was a feeling of the importance of this precaution which induced Mr. Locke to style himself "Gent." on the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... in the first instance only narrated by Aesop, and for a long time were handed down by the uncertain channel of oral tradition. Socrates is mentioned by Plato[8] as having employed his time while in prison, awaiting the return of the sacred ship from Delphos which was to be the signal of his death, in turning some of these fables into verse, but he thus versified only such as he remembered. Demetrius Phalereus, a philosopher ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... writers who have treated incidentally of agriculture are more than fifty in number. Those whom you may consult with profit are Hieron of Sicily and Attalus Philometor, among the philosophers; Democritus the physicist; Xenophon the disciple of Socrates; Aristotle and Theophrastus, the peripatetics; Archytas the pythagorean; likewise the Athenian Amphilochus, Anaxipolis of Thasos, Apollodorus of Lemnos, Aristophanes of Mallos, Antigonus of Cyme, Agathocles of Chios, Apollonius ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... of Everyman was no mere artist, but an artist-philosopher, and that the artist-philosophers are the only sort of artists I take quite seriously, will be no news to you. Even Plato and Boswell, as the dramatists who invented Socrates and Dr Johnson, impress me more deeply than the romantic playwrights. Ever since, as a boy, I first breathed the air of the transcendental regions at a performance of Mozart's Zauberflote, I have been proof against the garish splendors and alcoholic excitements ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... charter as a student of Natural Science. As long as that is sung in an English church, I have a right to investigate Nature boldly without stint or stay, and to call on all who have the will, to investigate her boldly likewise, and with Socrates of old, to follow the Logos ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... will study the antique busts," he said, "you will find that Socrates is Silenus dignified. I choose to believe in the infinite capacities of all men—and in the spirit in all. And so I try to restore my poor boy his capacities and his spirit. But that was not all. The time was coming when I could do no more for him, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... "Like Socrates, exactly. And if my father had not chastised me in time, if my mother had not been a saint, finally, if I had not myself placed, with the utmost energy, my will at the service of my conscience, I would be to-day, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... floor or pavement, and joined them to the architraves; and after his death Metagenes of Xypete added the frieze and the upper line of columns; Xenocles of Cholargus roofed or arched the lantern on the top of the temple of Castor and Pollux; and the long wall, which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... off the hundred ships which they had been preparing round Peloponnese, with a thousand heavy infantry and four hundred archers on board, under the command of Carcinus, son of Xenotimus, Proteas, son of Epicles, and Socrates, son of Antigenes. This armament weighed anchor and started on its cruise, and the Peloponnesians, after remaining in Attica as long as their provisions lasted, retired through Boeotia by a different road to that by which they had entered. As they passed Oropus they ravaged the territory of Graea, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... 'He believes that Socrates and the great Greeks and Romans who acted up to the light that was within them were not sent to hell. I think that is glorious, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... search of information, but is asking them merely for the sake of asking. Wherever the child ought to be able to reason out the answer, the mother should assist him to do so by asking him guiding questions in turn. This is the method that Socrates, the greatest of teachers and philosophers, employed with his pupils, and, indeed, with his own children. It is as useful in inculcating moral lessons as in teaching facts. When one of the sons of Socrates, Lamprocles, came to him complaining that the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... pride," I exclaimed, "when you have accomplished some noble action or produced some rare work of art; then why should not women be happy at realising in their persons consummate beauty and grace? It is very probable that, if Plato or Socrates had suddenly been turned into beautiful young creatures, their destiny would have been different from what it was; it is even exceedingly probable that wisdom would have prompted them very often to lay ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... fasten like a bloodhound upon those who were most eminent for moral and intellectual excellence. His caricaturing of Sophocles and Euripides, and turning their valuable writings into ridicule for the amusement of the mob, may be forgiven—but the death of Socrates will never cease to draw upon Aristophanes the execration of every man who has the slightest pretensions ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... retegit. Huc provoco. Certe antiquiores historici, quos etiam usurpant adversarii, fere numerantur Eusebius, Damasus, Hieronymus, Ruffinus, Orosius, Socrates, Sozomenus, Theodoretus, Cassiodorus, Gregorius Turonensis, Vsuardus, Regino, Marianus Sigebertus, Zonaras, Cedrenus, Nicephorus. Quid narrant? Nostrorum laudes, progressus, vicissitudinem, hostes. Imo vero, quod observes diligenter, illi qui dissident a nobis odio capitali, Philippus, Pantaleon, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... sort, as did Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector may easily retort that if it had been sternly acted on, we should have known very very little about Dr. Johnson, and nothing about Socrates. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... vagaries and weaknesses of their writer. Johnson protested against this attempt to 'enchain his volatility' by vows. But Boswell replies that they may be useful to one 'of a variable judgment and irregular inclinations. For my part, without affecting to be a Socrates, I am sure I have a more than ordinary struggle to maintain with the Evil Principle, and all the methods I can devise are little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude.' Could the doctor have read even the published correspondence he would have been at no loss ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... obeying his request and commandment, I have put me in devoir to oversee this his said book, and behold as nigh as I could how it accordeth with the original, being in French. And I find nothing discordant therein, save only in the dictes and sayings of Socrates, wherein I find that my said Lord hath left out certain and divers conclusions touching women. Whereof I marvel that my Lord hath not written them, ne what hath moved him so to do, ne what cause he had at that time; but I suppose that some fair lady ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story. Herodotus can tell one, if anybody can, and Plato (or Socrates) evidently could have done so if it had lain in his way: while the Anabasis, though hardly the Cyropaedia, shows glimmerings in Xenophon. But otherwise we must come down to Lucian and the East before we find the faculty. So, too, in Latin ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... a city in the air, you know not in what esteem men hold you and how many there are who burn with desire to dwell in it. Before your city was built, all men had a mania for Sparta; long hair and fasting were held in honour, men went dirty like Socrates and carried staves. Now all is changed. Firstly, as soon as 'tis dawn, they all spring out of bed together to go and seek their food, the same as you do; then they fly off towards the notices and finally ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... the greatest thinker the Sceptical School had known since the age of Pyrrho, its founder. In claiming a union between Pyrrhonism and the philosophy of Heraclitus, he recognised also the pre-Socratic tendency of the Sceptical School. The name of Socrates was all powerful in the Academy, but Aenesidemus comprehended the fact that the true spirit of Pyrrhonism was of earlier origin ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present, than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the wisest of uninspir'd mortals: To which if we add, that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or at least did not ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... touching favor in his instructions! What elevation in his maxims! What presence of mind! What ingenuity, and what justice in his answers! What government of his passions! What prejudice, blindness or ill faith must that be which dares to compare Socrates with ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... scroll, l. 485. The famous sentence of Socrates "Know thyself," so celebrated by writers of antiquity, and said by them to have descended from Heaven, however wise it may be, seems to be rather of a selfish nature; and the author of it might have added "Know also other people." But the sacred maxims of the author of Christianity, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... wholly indifferent to matters of dress. But it does not prove anything. Men rise by their strength, not by their weakness. Some men wait until after they have become rich or famous to become negligent of their personal appearance. But it is well to remember that "if Socrates and Aristippus have done aught against custom or good manner, let not a man think he can do the same: for they obtained this license by their great and excellent ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on the cliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis fought and lost.... In that port-hole glimpse a Themistocles was revealed, a Socrates, a Homer and a Phidias, an AEschylus, and a Pericles; yes, and a John brooding Revelations on his sea-girt rock as twilight ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I never thought him sincere. He is a rhetorician of GENIUS, as they say. But I don't understand him. He is a specimen of perpetual antithesis, without solution. He affects one like one of the old Sophists whom Socrates made fun of. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Jews in morality. How curious is the tolerant attitude of Socrates, like a modern man of the world talking to a young fellow who runs after the girls. The Jew, however he fell short in other respects, set himself a certain standard in cleanliness of life, and would not fall below it. The more creditable to him, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... can feel any reasonable doubt that we have heard about Christ and Socrates and Buddha and St. Francis a mere chaos of excerpts, a mere book of quotations. But from those fragmentary epigrams we can deduce greatness as clearly as we can deduce Venus from the torso of Venus or Hercules ex pede Herculem. If we knew nothing else about ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... curiosities and coins are found. Of the last, small Hungarian silver pieces, and large Venetian gold pieces, are the most numerous; although Roman copper coins are by no means rare. Stones engraved with figures of Socrates and Minerva were shown to me, as having been found in the province, and it is only two years since, that two golden ear-rings of fifteen drachms weight, and about the size of pigeons' eggs, were dug up in the neighbourhood of Blato. About the same ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Socrates in his old age, learned to play upon a musical instrument. Cato, aged 80, began to learn Greek; and Plutarch, in his old age, acquired Latin. John Gelida, of Valentia, in Spain, did not begin the study of belles-lettres, until he was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... the masculine Eros, and I marvel at Socrates for having remained virtuous in view of an Alcibiades ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... wild flights of imagination we may picture another kind of circle. Let a poet be the medium; Swedenborg, Dante, Blake, Socrates, Jacob Boehme, Tasso, Milton, Eckart, Ruysbroek, St. Teresa, Joan of Arc, Emerson, Shelley, and a few more visionaries, and dreamers be of the circle. Let our Radiant Being try again. The vibrations of the combined psychic force would respond more readily to the world-strangeness ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... great old age, and die in the odor of intense respectability. Salubrious, it seems, as well as creditable to the patient, is a regime of moderate hen-pecking, only it is necessary that he should be of the intermediate species between Socrates ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Mary Adams's note book she writes with maternal pride of his fancy for Laura: "It is the only time in Grant's life when he has looked up instead of down for something to love." And the mother sets down a communication from Socrates through the planchette to Amos, declaring that "Love is a sphere center"—a message which doubtless the fond parents worked into tremendous import for their child. Though a communication from some anonymous sage called the Peach Blow Philosopher, who began haunting Amos ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... High Chancellor, tell us the vital articles in the Montgomery document that have inspired you to arm Mars for the conflict, plunge millions into strife and thousands into hades, as Socrates would have said, employing ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Juan," in that admirable satire which, not being rightly understood, has given rise to so many calumnies, he says, after having spoken in the fifteenth canto of the moral greatness of various men, and among others of Socrates:— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... mean by 'the reason of its coming'?" questioned Prince Ivan. "Do you know, Casimir, I find you sometimes as puzzling as Socrates." ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... that about the poets:—the remark that the poet, who is of a reserved disposition, is uncommonly difficult to understand, and the ridiculous interpretation of Homer, are entirely in the spirit of Plato (compare Protag; Ion; Apol.). The characters are ill-drawn. Socrates assumes the 'superior person' and preaches too much, while Alcibiades is stupid and heavy-in-hand. There are traces of Stoic influence in the general tone and phraseology of the Dialogue (compare opos melesei tis...kaka: oti pas aphron ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... period. On the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena were painted the figures of Curius Dentatus and Cato,[142] while the pavement of the Duomo showed Hermes Trismegistus instructing both a pagan and a Christian, and Socrates ascending the steep hill of virtue. Perugino, some years later, decorated the Sala del Cambio at Perugia with the heroes, philosophers, and worthies of the ancient world. We are thus led by a gradual progress up to the final achievement of Raphael ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... flourished five centuries before the Christian era and who spoke some sublime truths, was nevertheless ignorant of a Revelation from heaven and inferior in his grasp of religious truth to such sages of Greece as Socrates and Plato. In his system also woman is practically a slave. She is simply the minister of man, and therefore unable to rear up children, sons who would reflect the greatness of soul of a noble motherhood. It has often been remarked that great men have had great mothers. ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... supreme. Some, I grant, will hold to a revelation of some sort. A thing more and more transcendental,—a thing more and more of fog and moonshine,—fog floating in German cellars from fumes of lager-beer, and moonshine gleaming from the imaginations of the drinkers. Some, like Socrates and Plato, will have a God supreme, personal, glorious, somewhat like the true; and with him many inferior deities,—animating the stars, the earth, mountains, valleys, plains, the sea, rivers, fountains, the air, trees, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... means cunning, not wise. The difference between this assertion and the one you refer to is curious and worth examining. It is quite certain, there is always some one man in the world wiser than all the rest; as Socrates was declared by the oracle to be; and as, I suppose, Bacon was in his day, and perhaps Burke in his. There is also some one, whose opinion would be probably true, if opposed to that of all around him; and it is always indubitable ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... while a mere infant, and though assured he had had a mother, he accepted the statement with the same blind faith, which was required for some of the religious dogmas he was called on to swallow. I have frequently wondered whether the ghost of poor Socrates would not be allowed, in consideration of his past sufferings and trials, to wander forever in that peaceful realm where even female ghosts ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... History required considerable personal attention. The marvelous part of it all was that while in Philadelphia, on this his fourth and last visit, while he fraternized with congenial souls and even presented himself at various social functions, he yet found leisure to print his little volume entitled "Socrates and Jesus Compared," which gave much pleasure to President Jefferson, so much indeed ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... When Socrates was building himself a house at Athens, being asked by one that observed the littleness of the design why a man so eminent would not have an abode more suitable to his dignity, he replied that he should think himself sufficiently accommodated if he could ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... is so large and has so many figures that it would not be easy to reproduce it here, and give a good idea of its various parts; so a portion only is shown, depicting what is commonly known as the group of Socrates and Alcibiades. Socrates can surely be distinguished, for he had a singular face and head. Some have thought the companion was not Alcibiades, ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... born 431 B.C. He was a pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans, and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land and property in Scillus, where he lived for many years before having to move once more, to settle in Corinth. He ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... SWEET. Thus think the crowd; who, eager to engage, Take quickly fire, and kindle into rage. Not so mild Thales nor Chrysippus thought, Nor that good man, who drank the poisonous draught With mind serene; and could not wish to see His vile accuser drink as deep as he: Exalted Socrates! divinely brave! Injur'd he fell, and dying he forgave! Too noble for revenge; which still we find The weakest frailty of a feeble ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... than a maggot and I am. That both are animalia I grant, but not rationalia: For though they do agree in kind, Specific difference we find; 1280 And can no more make bears of these, Than prove my horse is SOCRATES. That Synods are bear-gardens too, Thou dost affirm; but I say no: And thus I prove it in a word; 1285 Whats'ver assembly's not impow'r'd To censure, curse, absolve, and ordain, Can be no Synod: but bear-garden ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... proposition that there was in Greece an age of unreasoning credulity! It is like employing Jove to turn a spit or to set up tenpins. Everywhere, save in a single direction, and that of secondary importance with respect to antique thought, he practises the same enormous waste of material. Socrates is a mere block in his way, which he treats with nothing finer than a crow-bar. Socrates had set a higher value on ethical philosophy, derived from the consciousness of man, than on physical science; consequently, Dr. Draper's choice must be between treating him weakly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... focussing into feature and form the very same fact which they saw distorted and blurred in the troubled stream of time. The Good, in the Greek world, was simply the essence and soul of the Real; and the Socrates of Xenophon who frankly identified justice with the laws, was only expressing, and hardly with exaggeration, the current convictions of his countrymen. That, to my mind, is the attitude of health; and it is the one natural to the plain man in every well-organized society. Good is best known ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... psychologist ought to be able to make it out—that is what he is a psychologist for. But I don't agree with him. It is time that writers, especially those who are artists, recognized that there is no making out anything in this world, as once Socrates recognized it, and Voltaire, too. The mob thinks it knows and understands everything; and the more stupid it is the wider it imagines its outlook to be. And if a writer whom the mob believes in has the courage to say that he does not understand anything of what he sees, that alone will ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle—who are the best authorities—art was a dependence upon philosophy; that is to say, one with it, having no law outside of it. (Whereas, in the work of Delsarte, aesthetics occupies the first place, and ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... be perceived, you retail all that little you have pickt up. The more knowledge a man has, he will always be the less assuming; and a positive stiffness, especially in commonly-received opinions, is a certain sign and constant attendant of ignorance. Socrates, the wisest man among the wisest people, after all his researches declared, that all that he knew was, that he knew nothing. Cicero, the greatest master of reason that ever lived, was a professed academic or sceptist. And a learned and virtuous modern, whom I forbear ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... had already happened to make him as philosophical as Socrates. Epictetus remarks that our chief happiness should consist in knowing that we are entirely indifferent to calamity; that disgrace is nothing if our consciences are right and that death, far from being a calamity is, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... and the better and stronger they sounded the more he liked them. He knew many of them well, he invented a number more, and had he chosen could have out-argued the stoutest Aristotelian on his own grounds. Thus did he lead his adversaries on, almost like Socrates, only to ultimately overwhelm them in a more hopeless rout. All this in Rome too, in the heart of the Catholic world. Had he been worldly-wise, he would certainly have kept silent and unobtrusive till he had leave to go ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... professor[21] I would be delighted to see him perform acts of kindness and friendship, though I were not the object; he does it with such a grace. I think his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus,—four parts Socrates—four parts ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he replied quietly, arranging himself more comfortably on the couch. "The Law have I studied since the days of my father. Hillel and Shammiah have I poured over and of Philo have I sought knowledge. Yea, even of the heathen Socrates have I sought knowledge. But, it is vain. The traditions of the Elders do weary me for at last tradition is no more than tradition. What avails fierce contentions over the ashes of the red heifer, the waving of willows or the pouring of ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... understand; nay impossible, I believe, unless you accept the explanation I gave you. Yet there it is, an historical fact. 'What hath it profited posterity—quid posteritas emolumenti tulit,' wrote Sulpicius Severus, about 400 A.D., 'to read of Hector's fighting or Socrates' philosophising?' Pope Gregory the Great—St Gregory, who sent us the Roman missionaries—made no bones about it at all. 'Quoniam non cognovi literaturam,' he quoted approvingly from the 70th Psalm, 'introibo in potentias Domini': 'Because ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Mendelssohn's most popular philosophical work, "Phaedo, or the Immortality of the Soul," won extraordinary popularity in Berlin, as much for its attractive form as for its spiritual charms. The "German Plato," the "Jewish Socrates," were some of the epithets bestowed on him by multitudes of admirers. Indeed, the "Phaedo" of Mendelssohn is ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... Socrates once said, in one of his wise paradoxes, that it was better to sin knowingly than ignorantly. That is a hard saying, but it means that at least if we sin knowingly, there is some purpose, some courage in the soul. We take a risk ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... evening between these ill-assorted companions is in Hawthorne's most subtle vein of irony, and would have delighted old Socrates himself. Meanwhile the young bride weaves a screen of twigs and leaves, to protect herself and her husband from the gaze ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. The same inspired hand wrote "The Blind Preacher," and who that ever can read it can forget the climax reached in that sublime line: "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... that maintained the principle of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," in opposition to the party that, like the Spartans, believed that all political power should be monopolized by a favored few. Xenophon was also the disciple and friend of Socrates the philosopher, of whom some account will ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... and readiest, if not the most just, criterion of a man's services, is the wage that mankind pays him, or, briefly, what he earns. There at least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker, and Socrates fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, although the true business of each was not only something different, but something which remained unpaid. A man cannot forget that he is not superintended, and serves mankind on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of good social position, endowed with a gift of eloquence and of literary style, a pupil of Socrates, a distinguished soldier, an historian, an essayist, a sportsman, and a lover of the country, he represents a type of country gentleman greatly honoured in English life, and this should ensure a favourable reception for one of his chief works admirably rendered ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... poverty, but, by perseverance, he made his way through incredible difficulties to the highest literary reputation among the most eminent men of his country and of his age; and obtained the name of the Jewish Socrates. In consequence of his early, intense, and misapplied application in his first Jewish school, he was seized at ten years old with some dreadful nervous disease; this interested me, and I went on with his history. Of his life I should probably have remembered nothing, except ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... man Run as quickly as you can. You must never, never, never Think that Socrates was clever. The cleverest thing I ever knew Now cracks walnuts at the Zoo. Children, let a wandering fool Stuff your ears ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... suffering was the way to glory. Truly says a great poet (Milton), "who best can suffer, best can do." If we would look on some of the greatest teachers, philosophers, and benefactors of mankind, we must look for them in a prison-house. Socrates, when seventy-two years old, was a prisoner, and condemned to drink poison, because he taught higher lessons than the mob could understand. He died discussing the immorality of the soul, and his farewell to ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... to secure the supremacy of their religion; it became the partisan of the Duc de Guise against Henry I. and Henry IV., fomented civil strife, allied itself with Spain, and became guilty of cruel excesses. MON HABIT 20. Socrate: the poverty of Socrates is notorious. 27. FTE: a person's fte is the day of the ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any question, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in being under the influence of feelings, with which neither Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. Francis, could for ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of dialogue on horseback; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seventh of May A.C. 351 he and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem saw a brilliant cross in the heavens, stretching from Mount Golgotha to the Mount of Olives, and shining like the Sun for several hours.[43] And this marvellous vision is vouched for by St. Jerome, Socrates, Matins, and the Alexandrine Chronicle, as well as by St. Cyril; and is still kept in memory by the Greek Church, a solemn festival being held upon anniversaries of the day in question. But which particular "salutary sign" thus shone in the sky like the Sun ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... shown how the history of the Revolution has been garbled by the historians into the story of a struggle between a villainous monster on the one hand, and a virtuous fairy on the other: He has shown how a period that is said to have changed the thought of the world like the epochs of Socrates, of Christ, of the Reformation, and of the French Revolution, has been described in a series of "able rhetorical efforts, enlarged Fourth-of-July orations, or pleasing literary essays on selected phases of the contest." These ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... puts into the mouth of the Knight Socrates' argument to Cebes in their dialogue on the immortality of ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... happened—he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting for some communication which S. had promised him! Whether to live, or to die, he will be Socrates still. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... at his own ends. But his respect for eminent men, or rather his scale of eminence, is about the reverse of the popular scale. Scott, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Gibbon,—even Bacon, —are no heroes of his; stranger yet, he hardly admires Socrates, the glory of the Greek world; but Burns, and Samuel Johnson, and Mirabeau, he said interested him, and I suppose whoever else has given himself with all his heart to a leading instinct, and has not calculated too much. But ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... worked well in Herr Joachim's hands; composition, too, appears rather to have been a source of bitterness to him than of pleasure to others. I fail to see how "the high-school" is to be directed solely from the "high-stool" of the violinist. Socrates, at least, was not of opinion that Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles would prove capable of guiding the State by reason of their abilities as commanders and speakers; for, unfortunately, he could point to the results of their successes, and shew that the administration ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... our point of Latin history, remember always {143} that in 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian roots into places where they had no business; and preparing the way for the degradation of the entire Roman race under the Empire; their success being owed, remember also, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons. He entered Harvard at the early age of fourteen, but never attained a high rank there, although he took a prize for an essay on Socrates, and was made class poet after several others had declined. Next to his reserve and the faultless propriety of his conduct, his contemporaries at college seemed most impressed by the great maturity of his mind. Emerson appears never to have been really a ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... died very old at Rome. In his account of the numerous representations of the [Greek: Charites], he seems to throw some light upon a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia, which, as far as we know, has escaped the notice of the commentators. It is in the dialogue between Socrates and the courtesan Theodote. She wishes that he would come to her, to teach her the art of charming men. He replies, that he has no leisure, being hindered by many matters of private and public importance; and he adds, "I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... ideas not force, the spiritual property that gives dignity and grace and intellectual value to history, and its action on the ascending life of man, then we shall not be prone to explain the universal by the national, and civilisation by custom 9. A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates, a few lines that were inscribed on an Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the footsteps of a silent yet prophetic people who dwelt by the Dead Sea, and perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than the ancestral wisdom of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... had gathered around him at Vallencay all that remained of the wit, genius, and talent of French society in its better forms, he delighted to recount the instances in which this supernatural influence, like Socrates' daemon, had befriended him. He believed in the reality of this power when he believed in nothing else, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... most part, comprehend; and because certain characters lived in it two thousand four hundred years ago? What have these people in common with Pericles, what have these ladies in common with Aspasia (O fie)? Of the race of Englishmen who come wandering about the tomb of Socrates, do you think the majority would not have voted to hemlock him? Yes: for the very same superstition which leads men by the nose now, drove them onward in the days when the lowly husband of Xantippe died for daring to think simply and to speak the truth. I know of no quality more magnificent ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... signifies his barren shine Of moral powers an' reason? His English style and gesture fine Are a' clean out o' season. Like Socrates or Antonine, Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, But ne'er a word o' faith ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Esculapius which was fyrst Inuentour of Phesyke and amonge the Gentyles worshypped as a God. In the contrey of Grece were stodyes fyrst founded and ordeyned in the which began and sprange holsom medicyne which gaue vnto infect myndes frutful doctryne and norisshinge. Amonge whome Socrates that great begynner and honourer of wysdom began to dispute of ye maners of men. But for that he coude nat fynde certayne ende of goodnes and hyest felicite in naturall thinges: nor induce men to the same, he gaue the hye ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... disgrace as well, I reply that the soul which is hard enough to resist one wound is invulnerable to all. If we have utterly conquered the fear of death, nothing else can daunt us. What is disgrace to one who stands above the opinion of the multitude? what was even a death of disgrace to Socrates, who by entering a prison made it cease to be disgraceful? Cato was twice defeated in his candidature for the praetorship and consulship: well, this was the disgrace of those honours, and not of Cato. No one can be despised by another until he has learned to despise himself. The man who ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... to your bringing-up, certainly. I never had the honor of meeting Judge Lang, but I knew him by reputation. I remember to have heard some one say of him once—'He was a judge after Socrates' own heart. He heard courteously, he answered wisely, he considered soberly, he decided impartially. Added to this, he was one whom kings could not corrupt.' That ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... shall then stand on one of the higher steps. After hours of long, deep thought, Socrates perceived—do you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the way the people of the present age usually talk about the morals of labourers. You hardly ever address a labouring man upon his prospects in life, without quietly assuming that he is to possess, at starting, as a small moral capital to begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and the heroism of Epaminondas. "Be assured, my good man,"—you say to him,—"that if you work steadily for ten hours a day all your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... undertaking grave or deep studies, that woman lacks the logical faculty, that she has only intuition, nerve-force, etc., Mrs. Sewall said: It is true of every woman who has done the worthiest work in science, literature, or reform, from Diotima, the teacher of Socrates, to Margaret Fuller, the pupil of Channing and the peer of Emerson, that ignoring the methods of nerves and instincts, she has placed herself squarely on the basis of observation, investigation and reason. Men will admit that these women had strength and logic, but say they are exceptional women. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of past joys soothed and supported me under my sufferings, I certainly should not have endured the ten years' torture of the Magdeburg dungeon, with a fortitude that might have been worthy even of Socrates. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Adeimantus said: 'Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that you make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they are the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men, lands and houses and money of their own, they live ...
— The Republic • Plato
... prophecies—these make the history a gospel. The bare facts, without the exhibition of their purpose and meaning, are no more a gospel than any other story of a death would be. The facts with any lower explanation of their meaning are no gospel, any more than the story of the death of Socrates or any innocent martyr would be. If you would know the good news that will lift your heavy heart from sorrow and break your chains of sin, that will put music into your life and make your days blaze into brightness as when the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Winnington himself had not thought it beneath him to touch up for Clary's delectation and glory. If Will would only have tarried longer about his flowers and bees, and groves and rattlesnakes: if he had even stopped short at faces like those of Socrates, Caesar, Cleopatra, Fair Rosamond—what people could understand with help—and not slid off faster and more fatally into that dim delirium of good and evil, angels and archangels, the devil of temptation and the goblin of the flesh, the red fiend of ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... living creatures, And unto man especially above others all, To have at times convenient pastance, mirth and pleasures, So they be joined with honesty, and kept within due measures; And the same well allowed not only the said Cato, But also the Philosophers, Plutarch, Socrates, and Plato. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... that, if he referred to agnostics, they have no creed; and, by the nature of the case, cannot have any. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, "Try all things, hold fast by that which is good;" it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... behind the fading foliage. He was of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled with a sense of loathing, and determined to avenge the insult he had offered to my name, I put a stone in my sling, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... affiliated with no church, although baptized as a Catholic, and brought up in that church; but the frequent appeals to the Divinity in his journals, show his belief in, and reliance on, a higher power. He formulated his own religion as did Thoreau. The man who could write, "Socrates and Jesus were patterns to me" lived a correct life in its essentials. His asceticism, his unselfishness, the sympathy which he continually showed for others, his unworldliness,—what else is this but the gist of New Testament teaching? Like a tree nourished on ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... moral earnestness in the propagation of any system. There could, indeed, be no such thing as propagandism at all. If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred to be a contented pig rather than a discontented Socrates, we should have no positive reason for thinking him wrong; even did we think so we should have no motive for telling him so; even if we told him, we should have no means of ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... addressing him, "I can't help being angry with Mr. Townsend. I think I'm a little afraid of him. I'm a coward in some ways. You're different. You just smile kindly at me, as if you were older than Methuselah, and had all the wisdom of Solomon or Socrates, and were inclined to be ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... undermining belief in the reality of Christ's manhood is weakening sympathy with His sufferings. Calvary like Bethlehem has lost much of its appeal. A classical comparison will illustrate this fact. Plato's account of Socrates' last hour in the prison and of his drinking the hemlock is, I imagine, to many educated men far more moving than the story of the Passion and Death of Christ. There is a curious similarity in the two tragedies that invites attention ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... in the self-education of genius, we have a remarkable instance in the character of MOSES MENDELSSOHN, on whom literary Germany has bestowed the honourable title of "the Jewish Socrates."[A] So great apparently were the invincible obstructions which barred out Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philosophy, that, in the history of men of genius, it is something like taking in the history of man the savage of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the dramatic interest, the complexity of structure, the fertility of illustration, the shifting of the points of view, are characteristic of his best period of authorship. The vain search, the negative conclusion, the figure of the midwives, the constant profession of ignorance on the part of Socrates, also bear the stamp of the early dialogues, in which the original Socrates is not yet Platonized. Had we no other indications, we should be disposed to range the Theaetetus with the Apology and the Phaedrus, and perhaps even with the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... it was written, and had evidently, as the phrase goes, "made up his bundle of prejudices," he had not written, or at least published, very much prose; his mannerisms had not hardened. And above all, he was but just catching the public ear, and so was not tempted to assume the part of Chesterfield-Socrates, which he played later, to the diversion of some, to the real improvement of many, but a little to his own disaster. He was very thoroughly acquainted with the facts of his subject, which was not always the case later; and though his assumptions—the insensibility ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... prejudice, and to deliver philosophy from theological shackles. But their systems, too simple, too sensible, and too free from the marvellous, for imaginations enamoured with chimeras, were obliged to yield to the fabulous conjectures of such men as Plato and Socrates. Among the moderns, Hobbes, Spinosa, Bayle, etc., have followed the steps of Epicurus; but their doctrine has found very few followers, in a world, still intoxicated with ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Socrates, as on the last day of his life he sits discoursing with his friends, still holds good. He is discussing the same old question, whether there is anything more than force, material, mechanism in the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... this article nobody was more infatuated. His Cratylus is made up of a most absurd system of etymology. [465]Herodotus expressly says, that the Gods of Greece came in great measure from Egypt. Yet Socrates is by Plato in this treatise made to derive Artemis from [Greek: to artemes], integritas: Poseidon from [Greek: posi desmon], fetters to the feet: Hestia from [Greek: ousia], substance and essence: Demeter, from [Greek: didousa hos meter], distributing ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... own beliefs, and he must have confidence in them, for they are the grounds on which he acts, if he is a normal man. Even the faith of an Agnostic is based on a very positive belief. As for me, I feel that the churchman goes one step beyond him: he even doubts Doubt. Said Socrates: "I know nothing except this one thing, that I know nothing. The rest of you are ignorant even of this." Socrates was a great man. If he had been greater still, he might have said something like this: "I freely ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... of Socratic teaching was the idea that wisdom is the attribute of the Godhead, and Plato, for twenty years the companion and most favoured pupil of Socrates, was imbued with that doctrine, and, having arrived at the conclusion that the impulse to find out TRUTH was the necessity of intellectual man, he saw in Geometry the keystone of all Knowledge, because, among all other channels ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... prime of life, and interrupted in some literary undertakings and projects of great pith and moment. He had written a portion of a treatise on the "Evidences of Christianity," and was meditating some works, such as a "Metrical Version of the Psalms" and a tragedy on the history of Socrates, still more suitable to ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... sitting, as disciples, at the feet of her men of august minds, you may have sometimes doubted how to balance, or where to bestow your admiration. The acuteness of Aristotle—the purity of Plato—the calm, unrepented satisfaction of Socrates—the varied lore of Epicurus, and the lofty teachings of Zeno, have alternately attracted or absorbed your attention. Permit me to suppose, that the high-toned ethics of the Stoics, and their elevation of mind, which could teach its frail companion, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... poems so dear to us, his conversation alone would have made him the most interesting companion known to me. From this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, indeed, could be expected? And if, as a converser, I were to compare him with Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues of his great disciple, I think that I should have the assent of that eminently valued friend of Tennyson's, whose long labour of love has conferred ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... know about that," said the colonel. "The great opportunity for such a Brown Mouse may be in this very school, right now. He'd have as big an army right here as Socrates ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only judge of his own ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... translation of the German text of the entire Book of Concord was published in 1851 by the publishing house of Solomon D. Henkel & Bros., at Newmarket, Va. In this translation, however, greater stress was laid on literary style than upon an exact reproduction of the original. Ambrose and Socrates Henkel prepared the translation of the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the Appendix, and the Articles of Visitation. The Small Catechism was offered in the translation prepared by David Henkel in 1827. The ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... psychologists alike? Why not keep watch with his God in silence and alone? The reason was (only complicated with a thousand other things, for Tolstoy was a complex being and a Slav), the plain reason was, we repeat, because Leo Nikolaievitch was an artist. He obeyed that demon known to Socrates and Goethe, and minutely recorded his mental and emotional fluctuations. And with Richard Wagner and Dostoievsky, Tolstoy is one of the three most emotional temperaments of the nineteenth century. Unlike ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker |
