Historical voices

But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.

But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.

Do you suppose--to take an old man's privilege of a little self-praise--that I should have been likely to undertake such heavy labours by day and night, at home and abroad, if I had been destined to have the same limit to my glory as to my…

But if my soul is to perish with my body, nevertheless do you from awe of the gods, who guard and govern this fair universe, preserve my memory by the loyalty and piety of your lives.

And yet it is in sleepers that souls most clearly reveal their divine nature; for they foresee many events when they are allowed to escape and are left free.

Once more, you see that nothing is so like death as sleep.

And again, when man's natural frame is resolved into its elements by death, it is clearly seen whither each of the other elements departs: for they all go to the place from which they came: but the soul alone is invisible alike when…

I believe rather that when, by being liberated from all corporeal admixture, it has begun to be pure and undefiled, it is then that it becomes wise.

For myself, I never could be persuaded that souls while in mortal bodies were alive, and died directly they left them; nor, in fact, that the soul only lost all intelligence when it left the unintelligent body.

The honours paid to illustrious men had not continued to exist after their death, had the souls of these very men not done something to make us retain our recollection of them beyond the ordinary time.

Believe then that it is still the same, even though you see it not.

Even when I was with you, you did not see my soul, but knew that it was in this body of mine from what I did.

Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I have left you I shall be nowhere and no one.

And since the soul is always in motion and yet has no external source of motion, for it is self-moved, I conclude that it will also have no end to its motion, because it is not likely ever to abandon itself.

I have convinced myself, and I hold--in view of the rapid movement of the soul, its vivid memory of the past and its prophetic knowledge of the future, its many accomplishments, its vast range of knowledge, its numerous discoveries --that…

But I suppose the immortal gods to have sown souls broadcast in human bodies, that there might be some to survey the world, and while contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies to imitate it in the unvarying regularity of their life.

The soul, in fact, is of heavenly origin, forced down from its home in the highest, and, so to speak, buried in earth, a place quite opposed to its divine nature and its immortality.

For as long as we are imprisoned in this framework of the body, we perform a certain function and laborious work assigned us by fate.

I believe, Scipio and Laelius, that your fathers--those illustrious men and my dearest friends--are still alive, and that too with a life which alone deserves the name.

For I do not see why I should not venture to tell you my personal opinion as to death, of which I seem to myself to have a clearer vision in proportion as I am nearer to it.

That, therefore, which young men--not only uninstructed, but absolutely ignorant--treat as of no account, shall men who are neither young nor ignorant shrink from in terror?

As death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour, how can a man ever be unshaken in soul if he fears it?

For die we certainly must, and that too without being certain whether it may not be this very day.

But to disregard death is a lesson which must be studied from our youth up; for unless that is learnt, no one can have a quiet mind.