“In hatred is love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”

“You mustn't get so upset about what you feel, Spud. No one's a hundred per cent consistent all the time. We might like to be. We can plan our lives along certain lines. But you know, there's no future in screwing down all the pressure valves and smashing in the gauge. You can do it for a bit and then something goes. Sometimes it gets that the only thing is just to say, 'That's what I'd like to feel twenty-four hours a day; but, the hell with it, this is how I feel now.”

“We Persians have a saying that one should deliberate serious matters first drunk, then sober.”

“Don't talk so, Lysis. I'm sure you kept your head much better than I did." He smiled, and quoted a certain phrase, recalling a personal matter between us. Then he said, "Am I getting old, to find myself always thinking, 'Last year was better'?"-"Sometimes it seems to me, Lysis, that nothing has been the same since the Games."-"We think so, my dear, because that was our concern. If you asked that potter over there, or that old soldier, or Kallippides the actor, each would name his own Isthmia, I daresay... It has been a long war, Alexias. Twenty-four years now. Even Troy was only ten.”

“The school discussed friendship often. It is, they learned, one of the things man can least afford to lack; necessary to the good life, and beautiful in itself. Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist... Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.”

“Alexander offered him (Aristotle)a hand to mount the gangplank, andtried the effect of a smile. When the man returned it, it could be seen thatsmiling was what he would do best; he would not often be caught withhis head back laughing. But he did look like a man who would answerquestions.”

“The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.”