"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."

"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."

"Excellence of understanding comes from something divine, whereas the other excellences are probably close to the body."

"Beauty is the splendor of truth."

"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

"By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power."

"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."

"All learning has an emotional base."

"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand."

"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god."

"The constrained performance of bodily labour does, it is true, exert no evil influence on the body; but in the case of the mind, no study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory."

"Hope,' he says, 'cherishes the soul of him who lives justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey; hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man."

"Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes."

"It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason."

"You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t."

"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."

"Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony."

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."