I have good hope that there is something after death.

Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort-they are reliefs of pain.

We are too feeble and sluggish to make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the true heaven.

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.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.