There is truth and truth,’ said the priest of Delos. ‘It is true after its kind. - Mary Renault

All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

Each man in his life honors, and imitates as well as he can, that god to whose choir he belonged, while he is uncorrupted in his first incarnation here; and in the fashion he has thus learned, he bears himself to his beloved as well as to the rest. So, then, each chooses from among the beautiful a love conforming to his kind, and then, as if his chosen were his god, he sets him up and robes him for worship.

To hate excellence is to hate the gods.