Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.

There is but one evil, ignorance.

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.

Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb.

Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.

The Spirit is neither good nor bad, it runs where the wild heart leads" "Wisdom begins in wonder.