a digital library of Unitarian Universalist biographies, history, books, and media
the digital library of Unitarian Universalism
Home » Poetry, Prayers & Visual Arts » Socrates: Inward Beauty

Socrates: Inward Beauty

Harvard Square Library exists solely on the basis of donations.  If you have benefitted from any of our materials, and/or if making Unitarian Universalist intellectual heritage materials widely available and free is a value to you, please donate whatever you can--every little bit helps: Donate 

Give me beauty in the inward soul,

And may the inward and the outer be at one.

May I reckon wisdom to be wealth,

And may I have so much gold as a temperate person,

And only a temperate person,

Can bear and carry.

Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.) is credited with helping to establish the foundation for Western philosophy. He promoted critical reasoning and established the Socratic method of teaching, both of which employ critical questions in the pursuit of truth. Plato was Socrates’ student.

Series Navigation<< Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: PrayersWillard L. Sperry: Prayers >>