The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Classical antiquity6 quotes
For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives. — Socrates · 375 BCFor what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse? — Plato · 370 BCOnly two things does he anxiously wish for-bread and circuses. — Juvenal · 127The prudent man aspires not to pleasure, but to the absence of pain. — Aristotle · 322 BCThe good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy. — Aristotle · 322 BCThe goal in life is living in agreement with nature. — Zeno of Citium · 200Old Testament Era2 quotes
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. — Genesis 1:28 · 1405 BCFear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. — Ecclesiastes 12:13 · 931 BCMiddle Ages1 quote
Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge. — Dante Alighieri · 1321The Renaissance1 quote
What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. — William Shakespeare · 1616