So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence. - Plutarch

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.

But it seems to have eluded all these philosophers in what way each of us is truly two fold and composite. For that other two fold nature of ours they have not discerned, but merely the more obvious one, the blend of soul and body. But that there is some element of composition, some two fold nature and dissimilarity of the very soul within itself, since the irrational, as though it were another substance, is mingled and joined with reason by some compulsion of Nature — E this, it is likely, was not unknown even to Pythagoras, if we may judge by the man’s enthusiasm for the study of music, which he introduced to enchant and assuage the soul, perceiving that the soul has not every part of itself in subjection to discipline and study, and that not every part can be changed from vice by reason, but that the several parts have need of some other kind of persuasion to co operate with them, to mould them, and to tame them, if they are not to be utterly intractable and obstinate to the teaching of philosophy.