Great Throughts Treasury

"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"Books are immortal sons defying their sires. "

"Both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well. "

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

"But surely "blind" is just how you would describe men who have no true knowledge of reality, and no clear standard in their mind to refer to, as a painter refers to his model, and which they can study closely before they start laying down rules about what is fair or right or good where they are needed, or maintaining, as Guardians, any rules that already exist."

"But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?"

"But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?"

"Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically. "

"Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him? "

"But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best. "

"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men."

"Democracy passes into despotism."

"Courage is knowing what not to fear. "

"Character is simply habit long continued. "

"Do we learn with one part of us, feel angry with another, and desire the pleasures of eating and sex with another? Or do we employ our mind as a whole when our energies are employed in any of these ways? "

"Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another's company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two."

"Each person must tend to the business that accords with his nature. "

"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things. "

"Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know. "

"Eros guides us to Logos. "

"Engage in adolescent philosophy and education as boys and young men, and give special attention to their bodies as they grow up, to acquire a helper for philosophy. As the soul begins to mature with the passing years, tighten up its exercise, and when their strength declines and exempts them from military and political duties, then be turned out to pasture to do nothing - except as a sideline - but practice philosophy, if they're to live happily here and crown their lives when they die with their fitting portion over there. "

"For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes."

"For it is obvious to everybody, I think, that this study [of astronomy] compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to higher things. "

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. "

"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant."

"Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like."

"Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. "

"For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. "

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good "

"Excellent things are rare."

"For neither does wealth bring honor to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice."

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. "

"For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man. "

"For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. "

"For the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. "

"For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body."

"God is the cause only of good. "

"Friends have all things in common."

"For rhythm and harmony penetrate deeply into the mind and have a most powerful effect on it, and if education is good, bring balance and fairness, if it is bad, the reverse. "

"For we soon reap the fruits of literature in life, and prolonged indulgence in any form of literature in life leaves its mark on the moral nature of man, affecting not only the mind but physical poise and intonation. "

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. "

"He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself. [On the virtuous man]"

"He was a wise man who invented God. "

"He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs. "

"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. "

"I do not discourage a continued making progress albeit slowly. "

"How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? "

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."