"Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human."
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Plato quotes (page 47 of 48)
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"People regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, - about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them."
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"According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty."
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"Love is a great spirit. Everything spiritual is in between god and mortal."
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"Each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual - as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body."
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"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."
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"To fear death, gentlemen, is no other then to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know."
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"The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone."
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"There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth."
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"But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?"
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"When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows."
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"Consider how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed."
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"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."
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"But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; - that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power."
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"The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he."
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"Where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has a feeling of reverence and shame about the commission of any action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation."
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"Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing."
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"Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice."
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"Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you."
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"The Graces sought some holy ground, Whose sight should ever please; And in their search the soul they found Of Aristophanes."
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