The ultimate design of the Mysteries ... was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.
The disposition of noble dogs is to be gentle with people they know and the opposite with those they don't know...How, then, can the dog be anything other than a lover of learning since it defines what's its own and what's alien.
The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.
Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body.
We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.
It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.
For he who would proceed aright... should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms... 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 that beauty in every form is one and the same.