Sayings of Socrates 49

To one who said, "You are condemned by the Athenians to die," he made answer, "So are they, by Nature." But some ascribe this to Anaxagoras. 

When his wife said, "You suffer unjustly," he retorted, "Why, would you have me suffer justly?" 

He had a dream that some one said to him:

On the third day thou shalt come to the fertile fields of Phthia;

and he told Aeschines, "On the third day I shall die."

When he was about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus offered him a beautiful garment to die in: "What," said he, "is my own good enough to live in but not to die in?" 

When he was told that So-and-so spoke ill of him, he replied, "True, for he has never learnt to speak well." 

—Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.35

IMAGE: Salvator Rosa, The Death of Socrates (c. 1650)