Plato

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Necessity, who is the mother of invention.

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

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.

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Earth laughs in flowers.

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

The connection between us runs so strong and deep. It’s like a steel cable stretching across the ocean bed, so many fathoms below, that even the most skilled and courageous of deep sea divers cannot reach it to cut it. It remains strong, silent, invisible, invincible.