Great Throughts Treasury

"The world is the fairest of creations, and the Creator the best of Causes."

"Then I must surely be right in saying that we shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognize the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations."

"The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise. "

"There can be no happiness either for the community or for the individual man, unless he passes his life under the rule of righteousness with the guidance of wisdom."

"Truth is the beginning of every good thing both in Heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of the truth, for then he can be trusted."

"Your destiny shall not be allotted to you, but you shall choose it for yourselves. Let him who draws the first lot be the first to choose a life, which shall be his irrevocably. Virtue owns no master: he who honours her shall have more of her, and he who slights her, less."

"If I keep my good character, I shall be rich enough."

"When the soul returns into itself and reflects, its passes into… the region of that which is pure and everlasting, immortal and unchangeable."

"Man ... is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures."

"It is customary these days to ignore what should be done in favor of what pleases us."

"I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts. "

"Virtue is a kind of health, beauty and habit of the soul."

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."

"Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."

"No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding."

"No human thing is of serious importance."

"What is honored in a country will be cultivated there."

"The wise man will want to be ever with he who is better than himself."

"The qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth. "

"The prison is the world of sight."

"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety."

"There are three classes of men - lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."

"A city whose future rulers are the least eager to rule will necessarily be the best governed and freest from strife, and the one with opposite rulers the worst. "

"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men. "

"A life without investigation is not worth living. "

"A person's desires force him to something to reason and he berates himself and gets indignant with the part that forces him, and his spirit allies with reason as though reason and desire were at civil war. "

"According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with 4 arms, 4 legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. "

"All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance. "

"Age isn't easy for a good man if he's poor, nor will a bad man ever be cheerful with himself even if he's rich. "

"A house that has a library in it has a soul. "

"After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers."

"All learning has an emotional base. "

"All is flux, nothing stays still. "

"An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers. "

"And I understood then that I was a fool when I told you I would take my turn in singing the honors of Love, and admitted I was terribly clever in love affairs, whereas it seems I really had no idea how a eulogy ought to be made. For I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogized, 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. "

"All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation."

"And if you follow our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children."

"And great crimes and pure evil come only from vigorous natures perverted by upbringing; a weak nature never does anything great, good or evil. "

"And if the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavor to discover and recollect... I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument – but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it. "

"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."

"And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. "

"And those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. "

"And once we have given our community a good start, the process will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals. "

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. "

"Are we assured that there are two things which lead men to believe in the Gods, as we have already stated? What are they? One is the argument about the soul, which has been already mentioned — that it is the eldest and most divine of all things, to which motion attaining generation gives perpetual existence; the other was an argument from the order of the motion of the stars, and of all things under the dominion of the mind which ordered the universe. If a man look upon the world not lightly or ignorantly, there was never any one so godless who did not experience an effect opposite to that which the many imagine. For they think that those who handle these matters by the help of astronomy, and the accompanying arts of demonstration, may become godless, because they see, as far as they can see, things happening by necessity, and not by an intelligent will accomplishing good."

"And whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation. "

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. "

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder "

"Because a free man ought not to learn anything under duress. Compulsory physical exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks to the mind. Then don't use compulsion… but let your children's lessons take the form of play. You will learn more about their natural abilities that way. "

"Because the right path of love, and be guided by itself, be guided by another, is to start with the beauties below and rise to the supreme beauty, passing, so to speak, for all degrees of the scale of a single beautiful body to two, two to everyone else, the beautiful bodies to the fine jobs, fine occupations to fine sciences, in science until science comes to the science par excellence, which is none other than the science of beauty itself, and concludes as it is to know itself. "