Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.
No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.
The good things of life are produced by learning with hard work; the bad are reaped of their own accord, without hard work.
The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.
Poor mind, from the senses you take your arguments, and then want to defeat them? Your victory is your defeat.
Virtue isn’t not wronging others but not wishing to wrong others.
Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets.
The man enslaved to wealth can never be honest.
By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.
We think there is color, we think there is sweet, we think there is bitter, but in reality there are atoms and a void.
One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.
Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention; but in reality atoms and the void alone exist.
If you would know contentment, let your deeds be few.
Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.
We know nothing in reality; for truth lies in an abyss.
There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.
Soul and intellect are just the same things.
All things happen by virtue of necessity.
Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.
These differences, they say, are three: shape, arrangement, and position; because they hold that what is differs only in contour, inter-contact, inclination.
Nature and education are somewhat similar. The latter transforms man, and in so doing creates a second nature.