"No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."

"Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature."

"I have good hope that there is something after death."

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."

"Philosophy is the highest music."

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

"No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong. Only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again."

"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god."

"There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question."

"Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or better than cohesion and unity?"

"The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge."

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."

"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand."

"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good."

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?"

"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."

"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

"Necessity is the mother of invention."