Explore "The Words of Socrates" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A house was built by Socrates / That failed the public taste to please. / Some blamed the inside; some, the out; and all / Agreed that the apartments were too small. / Such rooms for him, the greatest sage of Greece! / 'I ask,' said he, 'no greater bliss / Than real friends to fill e'en this. ' / And reason had good Socrates / To think his house too large for these. / A crowd to be your friends will claim, / Till some unhandsome test you bring. / There's nothing plentier than the name; / There's nothing rarer than the thing.[1]
[1]: Phaedrus, III. 9.