Plato

Quid confert animae pugna Hectoris, vel disputatio Platonis, aut carmina Maronis, vel neniae Nasonis? Of what benefit to the soul are the struggles of Hector, the disputations of Plato, the songs of Virgil, or the dirges of Ovid?

—Honorius of Autun

Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.

—Tennyson

The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

—Whitehead, Alfred North

And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

—Sidney, Sir Philip

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

—Aristotle

It must be soöPlato, thou reason'st well!ö Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

—Addison,Joseph

To saya man is fallen in love,öor that he is deeply in love,öor up to the ears in love,öand sometimes even over head and ears in it,öcarries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:öthis is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,öI hold to be damnable and heretical:öand so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will,ömy uncleToby fell into it.

—Sterne, Laurence

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. 904

—Whitehead, Alfred North