Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!

Democracy passes into despotism.

Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.

Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain.