And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?

The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.

As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.

Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.