Plato Quotes
-
Grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise to be rich, and may I have such riches as only a person of self-restraint can bear or endure.
-
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.
-
That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.
-
The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad.
-
Mob rule and emasculation of the wise' and 'who will watch the guardians'?
-
Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
-
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
-
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
-
He who is of a calm and happy nature, will hardly feel the pressure of age.
-
Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.
-
If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.
-
The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. ... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
-
Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.
-
The race of the guardians must be kept pure.
-
Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.
-
Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom - all other knowledge is transient.
-
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
-
... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.
-
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
-
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
-
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
-
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.