"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."

"All learning has an emotional base."

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?"

"A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books."

"The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another."

"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."

"At the touch of love, Everyone becomes a poet."

"Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large."

"Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth."

"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."

"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."

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."

"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."

"Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? 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."

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

"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."

"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."