Thales (624 - 546 BC) -

"What is the divinity?" - "That which has neither beginning nor end. "

All things are full of god.

Love thy neighbor.

Anaximander (611 - 546 BC) -

The material principle of existing things was a certain infinite nature. From it the heavens and the worlds in them come into being. It is eternal and ageless, and it surrounds all the worlds.

The infinite has no beginning, . . . but seems to be the beginning of other things, and to surround all things and guide all . . . And this is the divine, for it is immortal and indestructible.

Heraclitus (544 - 483 BC) -

No man steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny-- it is the light that guides your way.

This cosmos, the same for all, was not made by gods or men, but always was and is and ever shall be ever-living fire, igniting in measures and extinguishing in measures.

All things are filled with souls and spirits.

It is wise to agree that all things are one.

Combinations, wholes and not-wholes, conjunction and separation, harmony and discord - out of all things comes One, and out of One all things.

God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger. He changes like oil mixed with different perfumes, which takes its name from the scent of each.

The same thing is present living and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; for the latter change and become the former, and again the former change and are the latter.

Socrates (470 - 399 BC) -

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy, if not you'll become a philosopher.

He who knows nothing knows he knows nothing, therefore he knows something.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

There is only one good; knowledge, and one evil; ignorance.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Plato (427 - 347 BC) -

If human is modest and satisfied, old age will not be heavy on him. If he is not, even youth will be a burden.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragidy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge."

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways -- I to die,  and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away. . . . A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

If a person shows that such things as wood, stones, and the like,  being many are also one, we admit that he shows the coexistence of the one and many, but he does not show that the many are one  or the one many; he is uttering not a paradox but a truism.

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) -

No great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness.

"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in knowing you have earned them."

"What is a friend? A single soul which dwells in two bodies."

Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead.

We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.

The actuality of thought is life.

Man is by nature a political animal.

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. . .. Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
 

Epicurus (341 - 270 B.C.) -
          Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity.

Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbor.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished; for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

'There are an infinite number of worlds both like and unlike this world of ours.''
 

Metrodorus of Chios -

''To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet only one grain will grow.''

Zeno of Cittium (300 - 260 BC)

The whole world and heaven are the substance of god

God, being eternal and existing throughout all matter, makes everything.

They give him the name Dia, because all things are due to him; Zeus, in so far as he is the cause of life; the name Athena is given, because the ruling part of the divinity extends to the aether; the name Hera marks its extension to the air; he is called Hephaestus since it spreads to the creative fire; Poseidon, since it stretches to the sea; Demeter, since it reaches to the earth.

Mind penetrates into every part of the world, just as the soul pervade us. . . The whole world is a living thing endowed with soul and with reason.

At certain fated times the entire world is subject to conflagration, and then is reconstituted afresh. But the primary fire is as it were a sperm which possesses the principles of all things and the causes of past, present and future events.

Epictetus (55 - 135 AD)-

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Everything has two handles -- by one of which it ought to be carried and by the other not.

Apart from the Will there is nothing good or bad.

We must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence

Julius Caeser (100 - 44 BC) -

It is a common human weakness to put too much trust in the uncertain and unknown, or to let one be feared too much by them.

Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 AD) -

The vast continents of Europe and of Asia are but corners of the creation; the ocean is but a drop, and Mount Athos but a grain in respect of the universe; and the present instant of time is but a point to the extent of eternity.

Nature works up the matter of the universe like wax; now it is a horse; soon you will find it melted down and run into the figure of a tree, then a man, then something else. Only for a brief time is it fixed in any species.

Do not take your whole life into your head at a time, nor burden yourself with the weight of the future. Neither what is past nor what is to come need afflict you, for you have only to deal with the present; and this is strangely lessened if you take it singly and by itself. Chide your fancy, therefore, if it grow faint.

There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.

All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co- ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason.

This you must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no-one who hinders you from always doing and saying the things which are according to the nature of which you are a part.

Every part of me will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe. and so on for ever. And by consequence of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the other direction.

You have existed as a part. You shall disappear in that which produced you; or rather, you shall be received back into its seminal principle by transmutation.
 

Plotinus (203 - 270 AD) -

Soul in its unity is not extended by fragmentation into bodies, but is entirely present where it is present, and omnipresent and undivided throughout the universe.

This universe is a single living being embracing all living beings within it, and possessing a single Soul that permeates all its parts to the degree of their participation in it. Every part of this sensible universe is fully participant in its material aspect, and in respect of soul, in the degree to which it shares in the World Soul.

Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul . . To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what  lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One.

If he remembers who he became when he merged with the One, he will bear its image in himself. He was himself one, with no diversity in himself or his outward relations; for no movement was in him, no passion, no desire for another, once the ascent was accomplished. Nor indeed was there any reason or though, nor, if we dare say it, any trace of himself.

A bolder course would be to abandon the duality of seer and seen, and count both as one. In that vision the seer does not see or distinguish, or even imagine, two; he is changed, no longer himself nor owning himself there, but belongs to God, one with him, centre joined with centre.