Euclid

For those people learn best who also imitate what is finest.¹¹⁶⁰

Demonax, Hypsaeus, and Socrates

Cities should be adorned with votive offerings,¹¹⁶¹ souls with learning.¹¹⁶²

Socrates

When Socrates was asked how one might guide one’s own children well,¹¹⁶³ he said, “By educating them while they are young, teaching them once they have become men to adapt to what happens, and distributing one’s property among them, so that they do not become enemies over it.”¹¹⁶⁴

Isocrates, To Demonicus

For bodies naturally grow through measured exertion, while the soul grows through worthy discourse.¹¹⁶⁵

Democritus

Ease is the worst thing of all for educating the young.¹¹⁶⁶ For it is this that begets these pleasures, from which badness arises.¹¹⁶⁷

Democritus: From the same author

Children who relax their shared effort to excel¹¹⁶⁸ would learn neither letters nor music nor competitive practice,¹¹⁶⁹ nor what most holds virtue together—the feeling of shame. For a sense of shame is very apt to arise from this.¹¹⁷⁰

Democritus: From the same author

For the fortunate, education is an adornment; for the unfortunate, a refuge.¹¹⁷¹

Democritus: From the same author

One will appear more effective in promoting virtue by using exhortation and persuasive speech than by using law and compulsion.¹¹⁷² For someone kept from injustice by law is likely to do wrong in secret; but someone led by persuasion to what is right is unlikely to do anything amiss either secretly or openly.¹¹⁷³ Hence, by acting rightly with understanding and knowledge, one becomes at once courageous and upright in judgment.¹¹⁷⁴

Plato, from Theages

All growing things seem likely to follow the same pattern: both things that spring from the earth and animals, the others as well as human beings.¹¹⁷⁵ For with plants, too, the easiest part for those of us who cultivate the earth is this—to make all the preparations before planting and to do the planting itself. But once what has been planted takes life, tending the growth becomes an extensive, hard, and troublesome task. Human affairs seem to follow the same course; I infer what holds in other cases from my own experience. For in my case the planting of this son—whether one should call it planting or begetting a child—has been the easiest thing of all.¹¹⁷⁶ But rearing him is difficult and fraught with anxiety for me, afraid for him as I am.¹¹⁷⁷

Diogenes

Whenever you concern yourself with someone else, you neglect yourself.¹¹⁷⁸

Plato

Plato urged his pupils to have these three things: self-control in their judgment, silence on their tongue, and modesty in their eyes.¹¹⁷⁹

Cleanthes

When a companion was about to leave and asked how he might go wrong as little as possible,¹¹⁸⁰ Cleanthes said, “If you imagined me present at everything you did.”¹¹⁸¹

Cleanthes: The same man

The same man said that the uneducated differ from wild beasts only in their bodily form.¹¹⁸²

Democritus

Nature and teaching are similar. For teaching reshapes a human being, and nature ⟨too⟩ produces by reshaping.¹¹⁸³

Democritus: From the same author

Learning produces noble deeds through toil, but ⟨ignorance⟩ reaps shameful ones of themselves, without toil.¹¹⁸⁴ For indeed it often forces a person to be like this even against his will. So … [the concluding clause is uncertain].¹¹⁸⁵