“Eros guides us to Logos.”

“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.”

“Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.”

“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.”

“So if anyone is to declare how the all was in this way genuinely born, he must also mix in the form of the wandering cause-how it is its nature to sweep things around. In this way, then, we must retreat, and, by taking in turn another, new beginning suited to these very matters, just as in what was before us earlier, so too in what is before us now, we must begin again from the beginning.”

“The lesser mysteries of loveFor he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful form; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form.”