Socrates of Bithynia Quotes

Success doesn't change you; fame does.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

The idol of your self is the mother of all idols. To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.

Were Women all like those whom here I name,
Woman to man I surely would prefer;
The Sun is feminine, nor deems it shame;
The Moon, though masculine, depends on her.

In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing.

When you meet the one among the millions, when amid millions of years, across the borderless wastes of time, you happen to catch him or her, neither a step too early nor a step too late, what else is there to do except to ask softly: "So you're here, too?

I want the money, the women, the fortune and fame
That means I end up burnin' in Hell, scorchin' in flame
That means I'm stealin' your checkbook and forgin' your name
This lifetime bliss for eternal torture and pain

Destiny was superb
it spoke among mountains and gray cumuli
like castles in the sky,
swollen with heat,
with rain,
with harvests,
with infinite richness.
…

The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.

Looking out from death you will always see
Those whom all your life you ought not to see

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

Weststruckness has dominated us for a hundred years... The youth are looking for the God of the yesteryears and that of the future. They are looking for the God of the Qur᾽an, while the nihilistic and self-founded history of the contemporary world has put down deep roots among us.

Among Jews, there is an absence of drunkenness, always a fruitful source of domestic strife and misconduct.

Happy the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!

The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment among men...