The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay.

Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.

No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

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.