“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.”

—  Socrates

Plato, Symposium, 175d
Plato

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty." by Socrates?
Socrates photo
Socrates 168
classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470–-399 BC

Related quotes

Plato photo

“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

175d
The Symposium

“They were empty gestures, the kind it was beginning to seem that these people were full of.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, Goldenboy (1988), p.115

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty…. I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo

“To be full of things is to be empty of what matters. To be empty of things is to be full of freedom.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

“Life is flowing away like water running out from a leaky vessel.”

Bhartrihari (570) Indian linguist, poet and writer

Vairagyaśatakam 38 https://archive.org/stream/Vairagya.Satakam.of.Bhartrihari#page/n28/mode/1up
Śatakatraya

Nicholas of Cusa photo

“There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

George Herbert photo

“639. Emptie vessels sound most.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

William Shakespeare photo

“The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V, No Fear, Act 4 Scene 4

G. K. Chesterton photo

“There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Robert Browning. (1903)
Context: One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Related topics