Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Graces sought some holy ground, Whose sight should ever please; And in their search the soul they found Of Aristophanes.
More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.
Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.
When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness.
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
It is better to be wise, and not to seem so, than to seem wise, and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary.
There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.
When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.
Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.
To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.
Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.
A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!
There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy . ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.
Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.
To him who disgraces his family life is no life, and to such a person there is no one a friend, neither while living nor when dead.
It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.
It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.
Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit.
The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences.
What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good.
The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.
Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible. . . . For this is the way of happiness.
...in every man there is an eye of the soul, which...is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.
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.
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.
No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.
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.
Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
For every man who has learned to fight in arms will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson.
We should not exercise the body without the joint assistance of the mind; nor exercise the mind without the joint assistance of the body.
For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?
Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.
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.