"Plato" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ears With something worth your boasting.—Nought appears. You blame your pens, and the poor wall, accurst From birth by gods and poets, comes off worst. Yet you looked bold, and talked of what you'd do, Could you lie snug for one free day or two. What boot Menander, Plato, and the rest You carried down from town to stock your nest? Think you by turning lazy to exempt Your life from envy? No, you'll earn contempt. Then stop your ears to sloth's enchanting voice, Or give up your best hopes: there ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... have treated you so shamefully! How, can you ever forgive me? The only reparation that I can now make, is to tell you the whole truth, without reservation. Ten months before I saw you, while I was at school near Boston, I met Phillip Plato. The fates would have it, that we should fall desperately in love with each other, at our first meeting. In a short time we were engaged. In entering into this engagement, I did so without the knowledge of my uncle, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Mount Aristotle a real Greek city has risen, peopled with peripatetic philosophers, and guarded by sentinels armed with propositions, antitheses, and sophisms, the master himself living in the centre of the town in a magnificent palace. Thus also in Plato's circle live souls continually occupied in the study of the prototype of ideas. Two years ago a fresh division of lunar property was made, some ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... a preacher, he resigned his position, moved to Concord, and dwelt apart from men, but "as he mused, the fire burned." Easily our first man of American letters, he is among the first essayists of all ages and climes. Essentially, however, he was a man of intellect, an American Plato, "a Greek head screwed upon Yankee shoulders," to use Holmes' expression. His essay upon "The American Scholar," and his book on "Nature," brought him fame in England, and invitations to lecture ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the Western Ocean, situated before or opposite to the Straits of Gades; and that out of this island there was an easy passage into some others which lay near a large continent, exceeding in bigness all Europe and Asia. So far Plato may have told the truth, and from this passage it is conjectured that the existence of the continent of America was known to the ancients. But he goes on, immediately after, to draw upon his imagination, and to tell us that Neptune settled ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... storm-power, Boreas, occupies an important place in early legend, and a singularly principal one in art; and I wish I could read to you a passage of Plato about the legend of Boreas and Oreithyia,* and the breeze and shade of the Ilissus—notwithstannding its severe reflection upon persons who waste their time on mythological studies; but I must go on at once to the fable with which you are all generally familiar, that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Luini's house I met another castrato, Millico, a great friend of the chief huntsman, Narischkin, who also became one of my friends. This Narischkin, a pleasant and a well-informed man, was the husband of the famous Maria Paulovna. It was at the chief huntsman's splendid table that I met Calogeso Plato, now archbishop of Novgorod, and then chaplain to the empress. This monk was a Russian, and a master of ruses, understood Greek, and spoke Latin and French, and was what would be called a fine man. It was no wonder that he rose ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a language, a vehicle of thought, in itself nothing. Plato's teaching in the third book of his Republic is the same, and the idea of the secondary nature of art, of its value only as the expression of something else, of a human or moral purpose only fully expressible in the drama, is the nucleus of all Wagner's theoretical writing. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... him his own select circle of ardent inquirers; and thus it was, to use the words of Mr. Harvey, and answer the questions proposed, that inquiries which had hitherto been "locked up in the deep, and to them unapproachable recesses of Plato, Pappus, Apollonius and Euclid * * porisms and loci, sections of ratio and of space, inclinations and tangencies,—subjects confined among the ancients to the very greatest minds, (became) familiar to men whose condition in life was, to say ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... seem like a traitor in my own camp. But as father said a while ago, I, too, have dreamed my dream. I did it as a girl—Plato's Republic, Moore's Utopia—I was steeped in all the ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... be easily understood, gives at once a history of religion, philosophy, art, literature, and science, in their relations to the outward universe. For instance, under the head of natural science among the Greeks, we have among other things an account of the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle; in treating the middle ages, Professor Schaller speaks of the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, and Paracelsus. One of the most interesting parts of the whole is that on the poetic view of nature ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... of Socrates. Being the Euthyphron, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Plato. Translated into English by F. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the species of the sensible. Augustine seems to touch on this opinion (Gen. ad lit. xii, 24) where he says that the "body feels not, but the soul through the body, which it makes use of as a kind of messenger, for reproducing within itself what is announced from without." Thus according to Plato, neither does intellectual knowledge proceed from sensible knowledge, nor sensible knowledge exclusively from sensible things; but these rouse the sensible soul to the sentient act, while the senses rouse the intellect to the act ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... self-conscious and nervous invalid, nor for her who in the exuberance of youth recklessly ignores the laws of a healthy life. The good society of scholars and of libraries and laboratories has no place and no attraction for her who finds no message in Plato, no beauty in mathematical order, and who never longs to know the meaning of the stars over her head or the flowers under her feet. Neither will the finer opportunities of college life appeal to one who, until ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... have fallen into the same error, but few have ever carried such feelings to the excess that Vivian Grey did; for while his mind was daily becoming more enervated under the beautiful but baneful influence of Classic Reverie, the youth lighted upon PLATO. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Gascoigne remarked, in his Epistle to the Reverend Divine (1574) that "It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not only permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing." Poetry has occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and you will remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his philosophical Utopia, was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical verse himself. So, to come down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry out of the living language of his country, had been one of the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... lost; But woman ripened earlier, and her life Was longer; and albeit their glorious names Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth The highest is the measure of the man, And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman: and in arts of government Elizabeth and others; arts of war The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man: And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bowed her state to them, that they might grow To use ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... hang themselves, others cast themselves down from the rock; aye, time has been when whole cities came utterly to an end: while for the sake of Freedom that is true, and sure, and unassailable, dost thou grudge to God what He gave, when He claims it? Wilt thou not study, as Plato saith, to endure, not death alone, but torture, exile, stripes—in a word, to render up all that is not thine own? Else thou wilt be a slave amid slaves, wert thou ten thousand times a consul; aye, not a whit the less, though thou climb the Palace steps. And ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... twice exarch. Of his first administration we know nothing at all; but in 646 he was succeeded by Plato (646-649), whose name we learn from a letter of the emperor Constans II. to his successor Olympius (649-652), who had been imperial chamberlain in Constantinople. Theodore Calliopas was then again appointed and ruled in Ravenna for eleven ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... all the world oppose, And like Drawcansir make all men his foes. See with what fancy pride he does pretend, His miser father's notions to amend, Huffs Plutarch, Plato, Pliny, Seneca, And bids even Cicero himself give way. Tells all the world, they follow a false light, And he alone, of all mankind is right. Thus, like a madman, who when all alone, Thinks himself King, and every chair a throne, Drunk with conceit, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... mariner had been informed of the existence of some rumours, he classed them with the information he had collected in the Cape de Verd Islands and with his classical recollections of the famous Island of Antilia and the Atlantides of Plato. From this information, which came from so many different sides, the certainty awoke within him that the east could be reached by the western route. However it may be, his glory remains whole and entire; he is really the discoverer ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... discovered the secret of success. By studying the old authors, he improved his taste, and acquired a disrelish for French literature. He was very fond of the Italian authors, but not knowing Greek, he only read the Greek authors through translations made by others. He was exceedingly fond of Plato, and his favorite copy ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Georgias made a present to the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid gold. We must not, I presume, suppose that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by Plato as splendid, even to ostentation. Plato himself is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence. Aristotle, after having been tutor to Alexander, and most munificently rewarded, as it is universally agreed, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... was, as a distinct science, little cultivated among the ancients; of technical works on the several arts individually, in which the means of execution were alone considered, they had no lack. Were I to select a guide from among the ancient philosophers, it should undoubtedly be Plato, who acquired the idea of the beautiful not by dissection, which never can give it, but by intuitive inspiration, and in whose works the germs of a genuine Philosophy of Art, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... one sign which he would recognise and understand. It was the Saint Andrew's Cross, which I made by crossing my arms. He immediately came to me and we conversed briefly as the time would permit, in the old language of Homer and Plato, which all patriotic Greeks love. He asked me if I was a Papa, and was pleased when I said, "Yes." I introduced him to my companions in the coach, and he greeted them warmly; and as the train began to move on we bade each other farewell. We ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... the books of the Zendavesta, and the period at which Zoroaster lived, there is the greatest difference of opinion. He is mentioned by Plato, who speaks of 'the magic (or religious doctrines) of Zoroaster the Ormazdian.' As Plato speaks of his religion as something established in the form of Magism, or the system of the Medes in West Iran, which the Avesta appears to have originated in Bactria, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... an Italian who possessed all that determination which came of Norse blood combined with the subtlety of the Italian character. He thought much of what the ancients said of a short course from Spain to India, of Plato's Atlantic Island; and conceived the idea of sailing to India over the Atlantic. He applied to the Genoese, who rejected his scheme as impracticable; then to Portugal; then to Spain. The fall of Granada led to his ultimate success; and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Mississip', Plato, Plutarch, Thoreau, the Bible, Shelley, Byron, and I, all together, dropping down," she chuckled, catching her breath. "I'm tripping down in that company. And there's Terabon. He's a good sport, too, and he'll be better ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, bits of Browning, and Lamb's Essays, and Omar Khayyam. I had to study them in my own room at night, so as to make him think I was well educated and shared his tastes; but I did not; no," she cried, with a stamp of her foot, "I hated his tastes! Aristotle and Plato, yes, and Shakespeare—dull to the last degree, but I liked him: he was so handsome, so thoughtful, such a gentleman. And I believed that as he was madly in love I could easily twist him round to my way of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... blindly into this business, we must indicate, in the first place, a distinction as to what is, and what is not, a sacrifice. To know this is expedient and good for all Christians.] Socrates, in the Phaedrus of Plato, says that he is especially fond of divisions, because without these nothing can either be explained or understood in speaking, and if he discovers any one skilful in making divisions, he says that he attends ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark of this divine flame—that which to see and show has given immortal glory to Plato and to Socrates—has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them—soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being fashioned by their education. "Would you obtain an idea of public education? Read Plato's 'Republic.'[3426].... The best social institutions are those the best qualified to change man's nature, to destroy his absolute being, to give him a relative being, and to convert self into the common unity, so that each individual ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bostonian, country, england, boston, milton, river, girl, mary, hudson, william, britain, miltonic, city, englishman, messiah, platonic, american, deity, bible, book, plato, christian, broadway, america, jehovah, british, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... communicate to others, both at-home and abroad, the knowledge of those things which they have received as truths—a method of proceeding which has not been adopted, and, in fact, could not have been, without a manifest absurdity, by those who profess to believe in the inspiration of Plato, Milton, Shakespeare, and other great, but, according to common opinion, uninspired men. All these and various other considerations which might be adduced seem to mark out the Bible, as being a book at least different from all other books, and to lead to the presumption that ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from the higher strata to the lower. In that noble romance, the "Republic" (which is now, thanks to the Master of Balliol, as intelligible to us all, as if it had been written in our mother tongue), Plato makes Socrates say that he should like to inculcate upon the citizens of his ideal state just one ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... cor. "By deferring repentence [sic—KTH], we accumulate our sorrows."—L. Murray cor. "There is no doubt that public speaking became early an engine of government."—Dr. Blair cor. "The different meanings of these two words, may not at first occur."—Id. "The sentiment is well expressed by Plato, but much better by Solomon."—L. Murray et al. cor. "They have had a greater privilege than we."—L. Mur. cor. "Every thing should be so arranged, that what goes before, may give light and force to what follows."—Dr. Blair cor. "So that his doctrines were embraced by great numbers."—Hist. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... degree of wealth and reputation till after he had been attacked in print, and fairly convicted of having destroyed a good number of the human species. Success raised upon such a foundation would, by a disciple of Plato, and some modern moralists, be ascribed to the innate virtue and generosity of the human heart, which naturally espouses the cause that needs protection. But I, whose notions of human excellence are not quite so sublime, am ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... philosophical myself; generally over a good cigar after a satisfactory dinner. At such times I open my Marcus Aurelius, my pocket Epicurus, my translation of Plato's "Republic." At such times I agree with them. Man troubles himself too much about the unessential. Let us cultivate serenity. Nothing can happen to us that we have not been constituted by Nature to sustain. That foolish farm labourer, on his precarious wage of twelve shillings ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... handsome, well-groomed and wearing his monocle with distinction. His sanctum is furnished with delightfully catholic taste—Louis Quinze furniture, a Japanese embossed wall-paper, pictures by BOTTICELLI and Mr. WYNDHAM LEWIS and statuettes of PLATO, VOLTAIRE and Mr. WELLS (the Historian, not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... John Norton's faith had suffered nothing; the severest and most violent shocks had come from another side—a side which none would guess, so complex and contradictory are the involutions of the human brain. Hellenism, Greek culture and ideal; academic groves; young disciples, Plato and Socrates, the august nakedness of the Gods were equal, or almost equal, in his mind with the lacerated bodies of meagre saints; and his heart wavered between the temple of simple lines and the cathedral ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... care for my profession of faith as regards that, I'll tell you that I don't believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind, love...both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of the masterpieces of the ancient Greek tragedies, the inspiration without which the world would never have known the Agamemnon or the immortal trilogy of Sophocles. It is the doctrine which made Plato describe punishment as going about with sin, "their heads tied together," and Hegel define it as "the other half of sin," while Emerson shows that "crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit which, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of pleasure ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... rule, they are distinguished among the learned, their characters are in harmony with their pursuits, and they are recognized everywhere for disinterestedness, philanthropy, and public and private virtue. While Mental Philosophy, has made but little progress since the times of Plato, and the world is but little better for scholastic disputations, Natural Science has civilized man, elevated his condition, increased the circle of his exertions, and, by the development of some of its simplest ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... think I have attained: and to say the truth, it is likeliest to be attained in books of this kind; for an example is a kind of picture, in which virtue becomes, as it were, an object of sight, and strikes us with an idea of that loveliness, which Plato asserts there is in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... were prodigious Porsons and Johnsons; but such gluttons are now rare. It is true that Mill, between his fourth and eighth years, read in the original all Herodotus and a good part of Xenophon, Lucian, Isocrates, Diogenes Laertius, Plato, and the Annual Register, besides Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Miller, Mosheim, and other historians; while before the age of thirteen he had mastered the whole of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Sallust, Thucydides, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... as recorded by Plato. I learned something of it when I was a student at Padua. Now, you have told me that the young man feels love for the young woman, and you appear to be right; but what do you think he hopes to get from her ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... persuade Mr. Pilkington to sell by auction that would be all right. If we can't, I advise you to buy it back, or a part of it, yourself. Buy back the books that make it valuable. You've got the Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan Horace and the Aurea Legenda printed by Wynken de Worde." (He positively blushed as he consummated this final act of treachery to Rickman's.) "And heaps of others equally valuable; I can give you a list of fifty or so. You can buy them for a pound a-piece and sell the lot for ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... world-righteousness that shall give peace, when nations "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,"[4] and the Angel-song of Peace and Goodwill in the legend of the Nativity, mean no more than the word "Socialism" in its best usage means. Plato, spiritual son of the Socrates who for truth's sake drained the hemlock cup to its dregs, dreamed of such social peace and unity, and the line of those who have seen the same vision of a love-welded ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... clerks of every condition, bishops, cardinals and popes, including the portrait of Pope Urban VI. Under the saint's feet are Sabellius, Arius, Averroes, and other heretics and philosophers with their books all torn. On either side of St Thomas are Plato, showing the Timaeus, and Aristotle pointing to his Ethics. Above is Jesus Christ, also in the air, with the four Evangelists about him. He is blessing St Thomas, and apparently sending the Holy Spirit upon him, filling him therewith ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... whetted my taste for more, and surreptitiously I raided the bookcases in the big saloon. I got through quite a number of books before my sacrilegious temerity was discovered by Ann, the old head-housemaid. I remember that among others I tried a translation of Plato's "Republic" then, and found extraordinarily little interest in it; I was much too young for that; but "Vathek"—"Vathek" was glorious stuff. That kicking affair! When ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... in which the author endeavors to prove that the heresiarchs have all taken their doctrines from the ancient philosophers:"—a very curious task for Origen to perform, since he was himself chiefly remarkable for the mixture of Zeno, Plato, and Aristotle, which he compounded with his Christianity. But apart from its controversial interest, the recovered manuscript will throw new light on the opinions and practices of the Neo-Platonists, and on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... capable of interesting an average audience assembled in a theatre. We must say "representation of imaginary personages" in order to exclude a lecture or a prize-fight; and we must say "an average audience" (or something to that effect) in order to exclude a dialogue of Plato or of Landor, the recitation of which might interest a specially selected public. Any further attempt to limit the content of the term "dramatic" is simply the expression of an opinion that such-and-such forms of representation will not be found to interest an audience; and this opinion ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... equal to the Scriptures,—and whether certain interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, for the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, suppose for a moment, that the works of Plato or Aristotle were to us in the place of the Scriptures; and that the question was, whether these works of theirs could be understood with certainty; it would prove nothing against our being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to them alone, another man were to say, that, to ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... the most eminent physicians, who have risen above the trammels of system, have vigorously expressed themselves regarding the utterly unreliable character of the drug system. Emerson affirmed that "The best part of health is a fine disposition." Said Plato, "You ought not to attempt to cure the body without the soul." A distinguished doctor of to-day remarked, "Of the nature of disease, and from whence it comes, we still know nothing, but thanks to chemistry we have new supplies of ammunition. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... roads to the general character of early travelling; but a few words in connection with roads remain to be said on that subject. Travelling for pleasure—taking what our grandfathers were wont to call the Grand Tour—were recreations almost unknown to the ancient world. If Plato went into Egypt, it was not to ascend the Nile, nor to study the monumental pictures of a land whose history was graven on rocks, but to hold close colloquy on metaphysics or divinity with the Dean and Chapter ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... which when it is justly adapted to variety of sentiment or description, contributes most effectually to unite the pleasing with the instructive[6]. This indeed seems to be the opinion of all the Ancients who have written on this subject. Thus Plato says expressly, that those Authors who employ numbers and images without music have no other merit than that of throwing prose ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Canon's Yeoman's Tale shows that, in the 14th century, there was a general belief in the possibility of finding the philosopher's stone, and effecting the transmutation, although the common practitioners of the art were regarded as deceivers. A disciple of Plato is supposed to ask his master to tell him the "name of the privee stoon." Plato gives him certain directions, and tells him he must ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... task of the group both to preserve the solidarity of the medial zone and to discriminate between the serviceable and the menacing variants. The latter must be coerced or suppressed, the former encouraged and given opportunity. In Plato's Republic the guardians did this work of selection which in modern groups is cared for by processes which seem only slightly ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... themselves, without having respect to the government of the world. Wherein they say he did temporize; though in secret, he thought there was no God. But certainly he is traduced; for his words are noble and divine: Non deos vulgi negare profanum; sed vulgi opiniones diis applicare profanum. Plato could have said no more. And although he had the confidence, to deny the administration, he had not the power, to deny the nature. The Indians of the West, have names for their particular gods, though they have no name for God: as if the heathens should have had the names ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... it may be stated, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is one of those who would sooner be wrong with Plato than right with Aristotle; in one word, he is a mystic. What he says of Novalis may with equal truth be said of himself: 'He belongs to that class of persons who do not recognise the syllogistic method as the chief organ for investigating truth, or feel themselves ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... answered Martin, "that he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs are not the best that reject all sorts ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... occupied the rooms next his, how many bumps the Saint George's boat made on the river; far more important was the thought that perhaps the oil in his lamp would run short before the night was out, or whether the edition of Plato his friend the Muggerbridge clergyman had given him was the best, and contained the fullest notes. In short, George Reader was ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... themselves are charmed with them. Whoever reads the great poets cannot but be made better by it, for they always introduce him to a higher society, to a greater style of manners and of thinking. Whoever learns to love what is beautiful is made incapable of the low and mean and bad. If Plato excludes the poets from his Republic, it is expressly on the ground that they speak unworthy things of the gods; that is, that they have lost the secret of their art, and use artificial types instead of speaking the true universal language of imagination. He who ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... anger is the acme of the manifestation of Schopenhauer's will to live, achieve and excel. Hiram Stanley rather absurdly described it as an epoch when primitive man first became angry and fought, overcoming the great quaternary carnivora and made himself the lord of creation. Plato said anger was the basis of the state, Ribot made it the establisher of justice in the world, and Bergson thinks society rests on anger at vice and crime, while Stekel thinks that temper qualities should henceforth be treated in every biography and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... indicate how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all analogues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... heathen wisdom is not very ancient in the world, nor at all countenanced from primitive times. Our Saviour had but a low esteem of it, as appears by His treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who followed the doctrines of Plato and Epicurus. St. Paul likewise, who was well versed in all the Grecian literature, seems very much to despise their philosophy, as we find in his writings, cautioning the Colossians to "beware lest any man spoil them through ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... the literary representations of life and life itself has been the cause of the ancient feud between teachers of morals and writers of fiction. Because of this Plato would banish poets from his Republic and the Puritans would exclude novelists and play-actors from their conventicles. But it is curious to observe how the character of the complaints varies with the change in literary fashions. The argument of serious persons against ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... taught the elements of learning within the precincts of its temples. At the time of Strabo who visited this town about A. D. 45, the apartments were still shown in which, four centuries before, Eudoxus and Plato had labored to learn the philosophy of Egypt. Here Joseph and Mary are said to have rested with our Saviour. A miserable village, called Metarea, now stands on the site of this once magnificent city. Near the village is the Pillar of On, a famous obelisk, supposed ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... some mystic rite, the poet musing in sadness on the mysteries of life, the philosopher imparting wisdom to the young, etc. etc. I believe Giorgione is simply giving us a poetical rendering of "The Golden Age," where, like Plato's philosopher-king, the seer all-wise and all-powerful holds sway, before whom the arts and sciences do homage; in this earthly paradise even strange animals live in happy harmony, and all is peace. Such a theme would well have ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... against brutality or the unseemly selfishness of passion. In Greece the words of the witty and the wise could be heard in the market-place; good conversation was not for the few alone; and the common man might of unquestioned right approach the circle of Socrates or Plato. The sense of community was everywhere, overthrowing reserve, and propitious to the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... genius, of a sudden, Extinguish life's taper, well pleas'd I'll hasten To Xenophon and Plato's musing shade And ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... make a language for themselves, as it were, and claim the sanction of external authority, until the mind is elevated so far as to feel the authority not less Divine, but no longer external. We may find fairly close analogies in other forms of that "Divine madness," which Plato says is "the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men"—such as the rapture of the poet, or (as Plato adds) of the lover.[29] And even the philosopher or man of science may be surprised into some such state by a sudden realisation of the sublimity ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... wrangling, by giving us all an agreeable object to worship, while for mental demands and social purposes generally we could fall back on Philosophy. Had not our fathers tried Philosophy? When had society a better well being than in the halcyon ages of Plato and Pythagoras? Yet there was a term of indecision with us—or rather incubation. To what school should we attach ourselves? A copy of the Enchiridion of Epictetus fell into our hands, and after studying it faithfully, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... thin-lipped, with a suggestion of mild asceticism in his face. He steps slowly through the long window of his study. He paces the closely shaven lawn. The crows caw reverently in lofty trees. He holds a calf-bound volume of Plato in his hand. From time to time he glances from the cramped Greek text to the noble, weatherworn towers of his cathedral. His life is delicately scented with a fine mixture of classical culture and Tallis' ferial responses. Our Dean—he is also rector of our parish—is a ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... a volume of Plato to comfort me after the irritation which my nerves had undergone, and sat down in an easy-chair beside the open window of my study. And with Plato in my hand, and all that outside my window, I began to feel ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the love of men and women that even when it demanded physical expression it was still the finest of all human relationship. This idea was, of course, widely held by the Greeks during the noblest epochs of their history, and Plato, though he does not, as is commonly believed, justify such expression as good in itself, evidently regards it as practically inevitable and, therefore, to be condoned. And though from this indulgent attitude there has been a very general revolt in modern times, the reaction ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... must live, can act honestly by the public and themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are: not, dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves; but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about "to kalon,"[*] like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a good habit to do that, anyhow, and he meant to run no risks. If "the race of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, whose thoughts were directed toward heaven," according to the word of Plato, then Ardea herodias must long ago have fallen from grace. I imagine his state of mind to be always like that of our pilgrim fathers in times of Indian massacres. When they went after the cows or to hoe the corn, they took their guns with them, and turned no corner without a sharp ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... reminded by Diderot's words on this last gentle epilogue to a harassing performance, of Plato's picture of aged Cephalus sitting in a cushioned chair, with the garland round his brows. "I was in the country almost alone, free from cares and disquiet, letting the hours flow on, with no other object than to find ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... to death in 524. His brief and busy life was marked by great literary achievement. His learning was vast, his industry untiring, his object unattainable— nothing less than the transmission to his countrymen of all the works of Plato and Aristotle, and the reconciliation of their apparently divergent views. To form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his Republic, one Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone showed no taint of corruption. ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the trail of the serpent. The breadth of his thought, the brilliancy of his criticisms, the eloquence of his style were clouded with sensualism. "When you see on his forehead the reflection of a ray from Plato," says Sainte-Beuve, "do not trust it; look well, there is always the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... judgment of the world; such also have they published by pen and tongue; and yet notwithstanding they themselves have lived in the common society with others, and have borne patiently with the errors and imperfections which they could not amend." Thus did "Plato the philosopher": thus will do John Knox. "I have communicated my judgment to the world: if the realm finds no inconvenience from the regiment of a woman, that which they approve shall I not further disallow than within my own breast; but shall be as well content to live under ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and by a strenuous effort of the imagination, Wordsworth was enabled to depict his own love in excelsis, to imagine what aspect it might have worn, if it had been its destiny to deny itself at some heroic call, and to confront with nobleness an extreme emergency, and to be victor (as Plato has it) in an Olympian contest of the soul. For, indeed, the "fervent, not ungovernable, love," which is the ideal that Protesilaus is sent to teach, is on a great scale the same affection which we ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air, Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare— Plato's Man!—bipedal, featherless from mandible to rump, Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump. First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable terms It invited her to banquet on imaginary worms. Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... severe studies—when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundred phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt, and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your little germ has grown? The illiterate ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... contradictory statements of the few resident Europeans and my own observations, I had little to help me, and realized every day how much truth there is in the dictum of Socrates—"The body is a hindrance to acquiring knowledge, and sight and hearing are not to be trusted."* [*Phaedo of Plato. Chapter x.] ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... truths are discovered by the light of nature originated from St. John's interpretation of a passage in the Gospel of Plato. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dignity, no one has yet been equal to the magnitude of its theme. They have followed the customary paths of the historical romance without seeming to realize that in a theme so spacious they could learn from the methods of Plato with Socrates, of Shakespeare with his kingly heroes, of the biographers of Francis of Assisi with their ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... in Republics; and if the use of speech be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices. Rhetoric, Plato says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in democracies it is too common to hide thought in words, to overlay it, to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of genius. The worthless pyrites ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Delight in the Torture of Others Indifference to Suffering Exposing the Sick and Aged Birth of Sympathy Women Crueler than Men Plato Denounces Sympathy Sham Altruism in India Evolution ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... teaching had an influence which it is difficult to measure; it acted on the tragedians in their magnificent attempts to reform the beliefs of their country by making them moral; it is to be traced in Plato, it also found expression in the mysteries. In its own development it gave rise to a new phenomenon in Greek religion, that of itinerant preachers who went about appealing to individuals to take thought for the salvation of their souls, and also, strange to say, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or "sizings", as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Aeschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons and the like, to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us;—Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... danger attached to friendships of this kind, and is it not danger, rather than variety, which is "the spice of life?" Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they spend whole days in the country with book ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the help of his style, together with a little philosophical chemistry," has made "the principles and ideas of the profligate Mandeville seem to have all the purity and simplicity of the morals of Plato, and to be only the true spirit of a republican carried a little too far." He gives a summary of the book, translates a few specimen passages, and concludes by saying, "I shall only add that the dedication to the Republic ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... united in regarding satire as exalted moral instruction and satirists as ethical philosophers. Casaubon's choice for this sort of praise was Persius; Heinsius and Stapylton likened their respective choices, Horace and Juvenal, to Socrates and Plato; and Rigault considered all three satirists to be philosophers, distinguished only by the different styles which their different periods required. The satirist might disguise himself as a jester, but only to make his moral wisdom more easily digestible; peeling ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... results upon himself of all this curious reading and study, nor mention what he found of truth or probability in it all. He merely quoted books and authors, in at least three languages, that stretched in a singular and catholic array from Plato and the Neo-Platonists across the ages to Myers, Du Prel, Flournoy, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Nota Thus was the table set round aboute Wyth goddes & goddesses as i haue you told Awaytyng on the bord was a grete route Of sage phylosophers & poetes many fold There was sad Sychero & Arystotle olde Tholome Dorothe wyth Dyogenes Plato Myssehala ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would be communications from living persons of fair talent and education; they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what is more noticeable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on the earth before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be truthful), I see much that philosophy ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... his fault; and that of the substitution of victims, the efficacious suffering of an innocent person for a guilty one. Both are at once pagan and Jewish ideas; they belong to the old fundamental errors of humanity. Yet, Plato knew that the punishment inflicted on a guilty person is not, nor should it be, a vengeance; it is a painful remedy imposed on him for his own benefit and that of society. At about the same period Athenian law laid down the principle that punishment should be as personal as the fault, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... besides being somewhat hidebound with patrician pride, is of the speculative kind, and dwells, where his whole character has been chiefly formed, in a world of poetical and philosophic ideals. He is an enthusiastic student of books. Plato is his favorite teacher; and he has studiously framed his life and tuned his thoughts to the grand and pure conceptions won from that all but divine source: Plato's genius walks with him in the Senate, sits with him at the fireside, goes with him to the wars, and still ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Easter holidays carefully preparing this speech, so as to have it ready in advance. What was his horror, on returning to School at the appointed date, to find that they were going to throw Demosthenes over altogether, and patronize Plato. Threats, entreaties, prayers—all were accounted nothing by the master who had led him into this morass of troubles. It is believed that the shock destroyed his reason. At any rate, the fact remains that that term (the summer term, mark ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... or four souls, but none of them a reasoning one. Let Pomponia meditate with Seneca or Cornutus over the question of what their great Logos is. Let them summon at once the shades of Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Plato, who are as much wearied there in Cimmerian regions as a finch in a cage. I wished to talk with her and with Plautius about something else. By the holy stomach of the Egyptian Isis! If I had told them right out directly why we came, I suppose that their virtue would have made as much ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... sure—immoral, florid, Asiatic, and diabolically popular,—but still always a poet, nem. con. This discovery therefore, has to me all the grace of novelty, as well as of consolation (according to Rochefoucault), to find myself no-poetised in such good company. I am content to 'err with Plato;' and can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather be received a non-poet with you, than be crowned with all the bays of (the yet-uncrowned) Lakers in their society. I believe you think better of those worthies than I do. I know them * * ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use." Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which I mention as the highest honour I can do that prince of philosophers. I have often since reflected, what destruction such doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe; and how many paths of fame would be then shut up ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Zarathustra, known to us as Zoroaster.* Most classical writers relegated Zoroaster to some remote age of antiquity—thus he is variously said to have lived six thousand years before the death of Plato,** five thousand before the Trojan war,*** one thousand before Moses, and six hundred before Xerxes' campaign against Athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the philosopher ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... recesses of libraries or from the ruins of Roman villas another Greek author or volume or work of art, and those which had never been lost were reinterpreted with much deeper insight. Aristotle was again vitalized, and Plato's noble idealistic philosophy was once more appreciatively studied and understood. In the light of this new revelation Latin literature, also, which had never ceased to be almost superstitiously studied, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... trumpet, till it produced a national courage, founded on the recollection of an illustrious past, which overthrew the might of the conqueror at the moment when he seemed about to dominate the world. Werther, as soft and melodious as Plato, was the first revelation to the world of that marvelous style which, in the hands of a master, compels a language which is as rich as Greek to be also ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Homer instead of Hygiene, Shakespeare instead of the Stock Exchange, Bacon instead of Banking, Plato instead of Paedagogics! Meaning intellect before intelligence, thought before dexterity, discovery before invention! Meaning the only thing that is really practical, ideas; and the only thing that is ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... I said, coming out to the table. Oliver Saffren was helping the professor down the steps, and Keredec, bent with suffering, but indomitable, gave me a hearty greeting, and began a ruthless dissection of Plato with the soup. Oliver, usually, very quiet, as I have said, seemed a little restless under the discourse to-night. However, he did not interrupt, sitting patiently until bedtime, though obviously not ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... elements of the best Athenian color, except physical ease. And ease is no Athenian quality! It's Persian! Socrates was a stone-cutter, you know. And even in the real Athens, even that best Athens, the one in Plato's mind—there was a whole class given over to doing the dirty work for the others. That never seemed to bother Plato—happy Plato! but—I'm sure I don't pretend to say if it ultimately means more or less greatness ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux Camelias, and in not a few English novels of our day than in the thousands of pages of the Arab. Here we have nothing of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... ancient times up to the present year, 187-, have been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales, fools who contradicted themselves, who understood nothing of natural science and the strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, columns of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the comedies of Aristophanes was boundless, when once his Birds had plunged me into the full torrent of the genius of this wanton favourite of the Graces, as he used to call himself with conscious daring. Side by side with this poet I read the principal dialogues of Plato, and from the Symposium I gained such a deep insight into the wonderful beauty of Greek life that I felt myself more truly at home in ancient Athens than in any conditions which the modern world has ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with their toes and fingers, and read unknown languages, and understand them too, by merely having the book placed on their stomachs. Ignorant peasants, when once entranced by the grand mesmeric fluid, could spout philosophy diviner than Plato ever wrote, descant upon the mysteries of the mind with more eloquence and truth than the profoundest metaphysicians the world ever saw, and solve knotty points of divinity with as much ease as waking men could undo ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... changed in the last several thousand years. Nor has his mind changed. There is no faculty of the mind of man to-day that did not exist in the minds of the men of long ago. Man has to-day no concept that is too wide and deep and abstract for the mind of Plato or Aristotle to grasp. Give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge that man to-day has access to, and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man of to-day and would achieve ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... instead. . . . Oh, Otty—you must forgive the old feud: but why did your parents send you to Cambridge? Mine sent me to a place where I had at least to sweat up forty pages or so of a fellow called Plato. Not being able to translate him, I got him more or less by heart. Here's the argument, then. . . . Supposing a friend makes a deposit with you, that's a debt, eh? Of course it is. But suppose it's a deposit of arms, or of money to buy arms, and he comes to you and asks for it when ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... population, strength, and grandeur, ib. Its orators, poets, and philosophers, 5 The influence of Rome upon the provinces, ib. The languages most extensively spoken, 6 The moral condition of the Empire, ib. The influence of the philosophical sects—the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academics, and Plato, 7 The influence of the current Polytheism, 9 The state of the Jews—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, ib. Preparations for a great Deliverer, and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... their force. Our minds by frivolous discourse We strengthen and embellish, "Let us be wise," said Plato once, When talking nonsense—"yonder dunce For folly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... us and of many men besides. They have the large reality of general ideas, which is a truer thing than the actuality of facts. This is why we know them and think of them as real people—old acquaintances whom we knew (perhaps) before we were born, when (as is conceivable) we lived with them in Plato's Realm of Ideas. In France, instead of calling a man a miser, they call him an Harpagon. We know Rosalind as we know our sweetest summer love; Hamlet is our elder brother, and understands our own ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... objectionable were not intended for them, either with the expectation of delighting them or with the purpose of shocking them. These passages, they can easily avoid. This book, however, was written that it might be read: not only read by the Solon, Socrates, Plato, or Seneca of the laity or the profession, but even by the billy-goated dispositioned, vulgar plebeian, who could no more be made to read cold, scientific, ungarnished facts than you can make an unwilling horse drink at the watering-trough. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy. But in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle, because there could never have been such a transition. Infinite Being is not a material vacuum "in the bosom" of which a world might arise. It is a Platonic idea—though Plato never entertained it—an essence, non-existent and immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of moving and colliding things. Such an essence is not conceivably the seat of the variations that enliven the world. It is only in thought that we may pass from infinite Being ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... is one of the established principles of physiology, which cannot be disturbed by any theories descending from antiquity, before the dawn of positive science. That the will resides in the blood and the heart, is about as near the truth as Plato's doctrine that the prophetic power belonged to the liver. If the region of Firmness in the brain be large, it will be strongly manifested, even though the heart be feeble, and as easily arrested ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... wed an evil daughter of an evil sire, if he but give her much wealth.... Wealth confounds our stock. Marvel not that the stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is mingling with the base." A century later eugenics was discussed in some detail by Plato, who suggested that the state intervene to mate the best with the best, and the worst with the worst; the former should be encouraged to have large families, and their children should be reared by the government, while the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... 'Twas a more enduring gift Than the wisdom of a Plato To our poverty and thrift. That respected root has flourished Nobly for a nation's need, But our brightest dreams are nourished Ever on a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... liberty. A great poet, in one of his inspired sonnets, speaking of his priceless possession, has said, "But who loves that must first be wise and good." Therefore do Pilgrims in their beautiful example teach liberty, teach republican institutions, as at an earlier day, Socrates and Plato, in their lessons of wisdom, taught liberty and helped the idea of the republic. If republican government has thus far failed in any experiment, as, perhaps, somewhere in Spanish America, it is because these lessons have been wanting. ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... Nichols and Philis Nichols, Hannah Champlin, Plato Alderson, Raney Scott, Jack Jeffers, Thomas Gardner, Julius Holden, Violet Freeman, Cuffy Buffum, Sylvia Gardner, Hagar Blackburn, Dolly Peach, Polly Gardner, Sally Alexander, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... up carving-knife and fork. "Great Caesar! I must have been dreaming. I was dreaming. I was recalling a turkey hunt down in Virginia with Colonel Stillwell and his man Plato. Plato was a good caller—but we didn't get a turkey. Now, this is as tender as—as it ought to be. A little more gravy? And as we came home, the colonel, who was of the real mint-julep type, proposed as a joke that Plato see what he could do toward getting some ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert |
