Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.

Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.

A state arises,as I conceive,out of the needs of mankind;no one is self-sufficing,but all of us have many wants

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

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

Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.