"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."

"So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funneled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews are cut.,."

"Is not the love of learning identical with a philosophical disposition?"

"There's a victory and defeat. The first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself."

"The truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing."

"All enquiry and all learning is but recollection."

"I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools."

"Wisdom alone is the true and unalloyed coin for which we ought to exchange all things, for this and with this everything is bought and sold Fortitude, temperance, and justice; in a word, true virtue subsists with wisdom."

"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."

"It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.,."