Plato

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

People die of fright and live of confidence.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country. You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

Self-command is the main discipline.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.