...both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well. - Plato

"Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler."

We certainly must contend by every argument against him who does away with knowledge or reason or mind and then makes any dogmatic assertion about anything. The philosopher, who pays the highest honor to these things, must necessarily, as it seems, because of them refuse to accept the theory of those who say the universe is at rest, whether as a unity or in many forms, and must also refuse utterly to listen to those who say that being is universal motion; … he must say that being and the universe consist of both.

[there are] two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art...

the first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give...

[the second], in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do...

phaedrus, i myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that i may be able to think and to speak.