To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

The soul takes nothing with her to the other world but her education and culture; and these, it is said, are of the greatest service or of the greatest injury to the dead man, at the very beginning of his journey hither.

Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.

Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.