“for the unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“فليس عسير أيها الاصدقاء أن نفر من وجه الموت, ولكن العسر كل العسر في تجنب الأخلاق الفاسدة, فالفساد والموت يعدوان في أعقابنا, ولكن الفساد أسرع من الموت عدوا”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“فلا ينبغي لأحد ان ينساق لرأي الناس إن كان مخالفا للعقل”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“the most important thing is not life, but the good life.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his action, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting life a good or a bad man.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“و إنه لعجحيب ولاشك ن يكون الرجل شجاعا, لأنه مزعور وجبان !”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“The next thing I want to do is to make a prophecy to you, the ones who voted against me; I’m now at that moment when human beings are most prone to turn prophet, when they’re about to die. I tell you, you Athenians who have become my killers, that just as soon as I’m dead you’ll meet with a punishment that – Zeus knows – will be much harsher than the one you’ve meted out to me by putting me to death. You’ve acted as you have now because you think it’ll let you off being challenged for an account of your life; in fact, I tell you, you’ll find 39d the case quite the opposite. There’ll be more, not fewer, people challenging you – people that I was holding back, without your noticing it, and they’ll be all the harsher because they’re younger, and you’ll be crosser than you are now. If you think killing people will stop anyone reproaching you for not living correctly, you’re not thinking straight. Being”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“It’s not from money that excellence comes, but from excellence money and the other things, all of them, come to be good for human beings, whether in private or in public life.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and as wise as possible, not to care for the city’s possessions more than for the city itself, and to care for other things in the same way.”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“لا نأبه لما يقوله الناس بل العبرة بما يقوله الفرد الحكيم فلا ينبغي أن تنقاد إلا للعقل وحده حتي ولو انتهي بنا إلي الموت”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“كثيرون هم من يحملون عصا السحر, أما العالمون بالسحر فقليل”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“وانت إذا رأيت رجلا يجزع من اقتراب الموت, كان جزعه دليلا قاطعا علي انه ليس محبا للحكمة, ولكنه محب للجسد, وربما كان في الوقت نفسه محبا للمال أو القوة أو كلايهما”
― Plato, quote from The Trial and Death of Socrates
“how can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain?”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Invitation to a Beheading
“The crown o' the earth doth melt. My lord!
O, wither'd is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Antony and Cleopatra
“Family means something different with us because it has to. It's not about blood. It's not even about who we like. It's about who Andrew's willing to protect.”
― Nora Sakavic, quote from The Foxhole Court
“Happiness is endless hapiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.”
― Tobias Wolff, quote from This Boy's Life
“The truth is,” she said shakily, “that I am scared to death of being here.”
“I know you are,” he said, sobering, “but I am the last person in the world you’ll ever have to fear.”
His words and his tone made the quaking in her limbs, the hammering of her heart, begin again, and Elizabeth hastily drank a liberal amount of her wine, praying it would calm her rioting nerves. As if he saw her distress, he smoothly changed the topic. “Have you given any more thought to the injustice done Galileo?”
She shook her head. “I must have sounded very silly last night, going on about how wrong it was to bring him up before the Inquisition. It was an absurd thing to discuss with anyone, especially a gentleman.”
“I thought it was a refreshing alternative to the usual insipid trivialities.”
“Did you really?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes searching his with a mixture of disbelief and hope, unaware that she was being neatly distracted from her woes and drawn into a discussion she’d find easier.
“I did.”
“I wish society felt that way.”
He grinned sympathetically. “How long have you been required to hide the fact that you have a mind?”
“Four weeks,” she admitted, chuckling at his phrasing. “You cannot imagine how awful it is to mouth platitudes to people when you’re longing to ask them about things they’ve seen and things they know. If they’re male, they wouldn’t tell you, of course, even if you did ask.”
“What would they say?” he teased.
“They would say,” she said wryly, “that the answer would be beyond a female’s comprehension-or that they fear offending my tender sensibilities.”
“What sorts of questions have you been asking?”
Her eyes lit up with a mixture of laughter and frustration. “I asked Sir Elston Greeley, who had just returned from extensive travels, if he had happened to journey to the colonies, and he said that he had. But when I asked him to describe to me how the natives looked and how they lived, he coughed and sputtered and told me it wasn’t at all ‘the thing’ to discuss ‘savages’ with a female, and that I’d swoon if he did.”
“Their appearance and living habits depend upon their tribe,” Ian told her, beginning to answer her questions. “Some of the tribes are ‘savage’ by our standards, not theirs, and some of the tribes are peaceful by any standards…”
Two hours flew by as Elizabeth asked him questions and listened in fascination to stories of places he had seen, and not once in all that time did he refuse to answer or treat her comments lightly. He spoke to her like an equal and seemed to enjoy it whenever she debated an opinion with him. They’d eaten lunch and returned to the sofa; she knew it was past time for her to leave, and yet she was loath to end their stolen afternoon.”
― Judith McNaught, quote from Almost Heaven
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.