Plato

oth young and old, to take no care either for the body, or for riches, prior to or so much as for the soul, how it may be made most perfect, telling you that virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?

the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.

Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?

Then now I think you will have no difficulty in understanding my meaning when I asked the question whether the end of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing?

Probably the youth will say to himself, in the words of Pindar, "Should I, by justice or by crooked ways, ascend a loftier tower which may be a fortress to me for all my days?"

those stories are quite unfit to be repeated

Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.

Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.

If he change at all he can only change for the worse, for we cannot suppose him to be deficient either in virtue or beauty.