#socrates

Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old. ↗

— Plato

#plato #socrates #symposium #experience

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#conscious #difference #great #immeasurably #jesus

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates. ↗

— Franz Grillparzer

#life #literature #looking #looks #loudly

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer. ↗

— David Antin

#debates #entertainer #entertainment #greece #paradoxical

If I am in love, many things about the world, not just the immediate object of my love, seem lovable. To say 'I love X' is somehow really to say 'X inspires love in me', and that love then attaches itself to objects other than X as well. The expansiveness of love is a natural means of ascent between levels. ↗

— Robin Waterfield

#diotima #plato #socrates #symposium #inspirational

In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#alone #always #anything #difficult #guess

Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed. ↗

— Moses Mendelssohn

#compose #except #had #helped #himself

Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his friendly company and instruction. ↗

— Moses Mendelssohn

#came #company #educated #enjoy #fame

When Socrates was about 30, and his father was long dead, he was still pursuing the art of sculpture, but from necessity, and without much inclination. ↗

— Moses Mendelssohn

#art #dead #father #his #inclination

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul. ↗

— Plato

#i #knowledge #said #socrates #soul