How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles - are you still the man you were?" he replied, "Peace, most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."

So 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.

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

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance.

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.

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.