To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war

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.

Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy.

No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.

... our purpose in founding our state was not to promote the happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community. Our idea was that we were most likely to justice in such a community, and so be able to decide the question we are trying to answer. We are therefore at the moment trying to construct what we think is a happy community by securing the happiness not of a select minority, but of a whole.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.