"Yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route."

"Life is a short exile."

"I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it."

"Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been."

"They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil, but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants, and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice, it is a mean or compromise."

"Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it."

"When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? Is not that the inference?"

"If a man says that it is right to give everyone his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one."

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

"Is there a perfect world?"

"The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too."

"It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death."

"The souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper, often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer, have time to grasp a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity, its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers, and without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark."

"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue."

"The helpful is beautiful; only the harmful is ugly."

"Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know."

"There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good."

"The harder you work, the luckier you get."

"Appearance tyrannizes over truth."

"The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died."