'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?'

Before all it's necessary to look after the Soul, if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.

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.

Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.