Plato Quotes
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No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
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Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?
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Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.
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At the Egyptian city of Naucratis there was a famous old god whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis was sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.
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Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.
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We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
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What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?
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Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost.
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What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine,... the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God,... ?
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People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
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Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.
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I have good hope that there is something after death.
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Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.
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For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
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Music is to the mind as air is to the body.
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A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
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The best stomachs are not those which reject all foods.
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As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.
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Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom - all other knowledge is transient.
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Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth.
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Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!
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Neither do the ignorant love wisdom or desire to become wise; for this is the grievous thing about ignorance, that those who are neither good nor beautiful think they are good enough, and do not desire that which they do not think they are lacking.
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The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.
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What the expression is intended to mean, I think, is that there is a better and a worse element in the character of each individual, and that when the naturally better element controls the worse then the man is said to be "master of himself", as a term of praise. But when - as a result of bad upbringing or bad company one s better element is overpowered by the numerical superiority of one s worse impulses, then one is criticized for not being master of oneself and for lack of self control.