Date: c. 480 BCE

"Uplift yourself from your lower self, even as an elephant draws himself out of a muddy swamp."

— Gautama Buddha (c. 563 BCE, 483 BCE)

Date: 474 BC

"Read me the name of the Olympic victor, the son of Archestratus, where it has been written in my mind."

— Pindar (522 - c. 443 BC)

Date: c. 458 BC

"And unless one fate ordained of the gods restrains another fate from winning the advantage, my heart would outstrip my tongue and pour forth its fears; but, as it is, it mutters only in the dark, distressed and hopeless ever to unravel anything in time when my soul's aflame."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: c. 458 BC

"This now at one moment bodes ill, while then again hope, shining with kindly light from the sacrifices, wards off the biting care of the sorrow that gnaws my heart."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: c. 458 BC

"Zeus, whoever he may be,--if by this name it pleases him to be invoked, by this name I call to him--as I weigh all things in the balance, I have nothing to compare save “Zeus,” if in truth I must cast aside this vain burden from my heart."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: c. 458 BC

"But even as trouble, bringing memory of pain, drips over the mind in sleep, so wisdom comes to men, whether they want it or not."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: 420 BC

It does, but not for you. Truth is not in you--for your ears, your mind, your eyes are blind!

— Sophocles (495 BC - 405 BC)

Date: c. 390 B.C.

"And if the soul too, my dear Alcibiades, is to know herself, she must surely look at a soul [like an eye looking into the pupil of another eye], and especially at that region of it in which occurs the virtue of a soul--wisdom, and at any other part of a soul which resembles this?"

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 387 B.C.

"[T]hat as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 387 B.C.

"And so some clever fellow, a Sicilian perhaps or Italian, writing in allegory, by a slight perversion of language named this part of the soul a jar, because it can be swayed and easily persuaded, and the foolish he called the uninitiate, and that part of the soul in foolish people where the desi...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)