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Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.
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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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Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
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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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Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom - all other knowledge is transient.
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And if we are good, we are beneficent: for all good things are beneficial. Are they not?
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A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods.
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Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.
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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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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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Music is to the mind as air is to the body.
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Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.
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I have good hope that there is something after death.
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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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Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost.
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Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.
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Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.
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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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The best stomachs are not those which reject all foods.
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Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
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Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.
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And the first step, as you know, is always what matters most, particularly when we are dealing with those who are young and tender. That is the time when they are taking shape and when any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark.
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I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.