Moreover, in his old age he learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment. As Xenophon relates in the Symposium, it was his regular habit to dance, thinking that such exercise helped to keep the body in good condition.
He used to say that his supernatural sign warned him beforehand of the future; that to make a good start was no trifling advantage, but a trifle turned the scale; and that he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.
He said that, when people paid a high price for fruit which had ripened early, they must despair of seeing the fruit ripen at the proper season. And, being once asked in what consisted the virtue of a young man, he said, "In doing nothing to excess."
He held that geometry should be studied to the point at which a man is able to measure the land which he acquires or parts with.
—Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.32
IMAGE: Honore Daumier, Socratic Dancing
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