Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Socrates, the dialectical hero of the Platonic drama, reminds us of the kindred nature of the Euripidean hero who must defend his actions with arguments and counterarguments and in the process often risks the loss of our tragic pity; for who could mistake the optimistic element in the nature of the dialectic, which celebrates a triumph with every conclusion and can breathe only in cool clarity and consciousness.

And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman’s breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.