The Apology

„What! do I not seem to you to have spent my whole life in meditating my defence?" And when Hermogenes asked him, "How?" he added: "By a lifelong persistence in doing nothing wrong, and that I take to be the finest practice for his defence which a man could devise.”

„while others provide themselves with delicacies of the market at great cost, mine are the dainties of the soul more sweet than theirs, procured without expense?”

„regard to health a man prefers to obey his doctor rather than his parents; in the public assembly the citizens of Athens, I presume, obey those whose arguments exhibit the soundest wisdom rather than their own relations.”

„to propose a counter-penalty was like a confession of guilt”

„For me, I find a certain consolation in the case of Palamedes, whose end was not unlike my own; who still even to-day furnishes a far nobler theme of song than Odysseus who unjustly slew him; and I know that testimony will be borne to me also by time future and time past that I never wronged another at any time or ever made a worse man of him, but ever tried to benefit those who practised discussion with me, teaching them gratuitously every good thing in my power.”

„Do you not know that for many a long day, ever since I was born, sentence of death was passed upon me by nature?”

„Would you have been better pleased, my dear one, to see me put to death for some just reason rather than unjustly?”

„even in face of death he showed no touch of weakness, but with gaiety welcomed death's embrace, and discharged life's debt. For myself indeed, as I lay to mind the wisdom of the man and his nobility, I can neither forget him nor, remembering him, forbear to praise him. But if any of those who make virtue their pursuit have ever met a more helpful friend than Socrates, I tender such an one my congratulations as a most enviable man.”