A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
SocratesRead
Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote encourages acceptance of changes in others as a return to their authentic selves rather than a cause for sadness.
Socrates highlights the importance of recognizing that people can change and that these changes may reflect a deeper, more genuine aspect of their identity. Instead of grieving over someone's sudden transformation, we should understand it as their liberation from pretense, which can often lead to a more honest connection with ourselves and others.
Themes
ChangeAuthenticitySelfAcceptancePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth, one might say this quote to encourage acceptance of friends' changes.
More from Socrates
All quotes βThe poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
SocratesRead
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
SocratesRead
The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.
SocratesRead
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." "It is not living that matters, but living rightly. The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
Similar quotes
Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future.
Donella MeadowsRead
I'm just trying to rid the world of all these fevered egos that are tainting our collective unconscious.
Bill HicksRead
How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.
Eric HofferRead
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.
Zygmunt BaumanRead
To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we 'know' that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
Wendell BerryRead