Phaedrus Quotes

“Love is a serious mental disease.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“[there are] two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art...

the first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give...

[the second], in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do...

phaedrus, i myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that i may be able to think and to speak.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings . . . the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with it the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art . . . So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense . . . madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“The word friend is common, the fact is rare.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You'd think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn't know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father's support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. [275d-e]”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“... as a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“... there is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“the matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ...”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know...”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer—his writing is good enough for him; and”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“There is a third form of possession or madness, of which the Muses are the source. This seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt passionate expression, especially in lyric poetry, glorifying the countless mighty deeds of ancient times for the instruction of posterity. But if any man comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to nought by the poetry of madness, and behold, their place is nowhere to be found.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“All soul is immortal. For that which is always in movement is immortal; that which moves something else, and is moved by something else, in ceasing from movement ceases from living. So only that which moves itself, because it does not abandon itself, never stops moving. But it is also source and first principle of movement for the other things which move. Now a first principle is something which does not come into being. For all that comes into being must come into being from a first principle, but a first principle itself cannot come into being from anything at all; for if a first principle came into being from anything, it would not do so from a first principle. Since it is something that does not come into being, it must also be something which does not perish. For if a first principle is destroyed, neither will it ever come into being from anything itself nor will anything else come into being from it, given that all things must come into being from a first principle. It is in this way, then, that that which moves itself is a first principle of movement. It is not possible for this either to be destroyed or to come into being, or else the whole universe and the whole of that which comes to be might collapse together and come to a halt, and never again have a source from which things will be moved and come to be. And since that which is moved by itself has been shown to be immortal, it will incur no shame to say that this is the essence and the definition of the soul”
― plato, Phaedrus

“May not 'the wolf,' as the proverb says, 'claim a hearing'?”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, there is always one and the same answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Les amants, en effet, regrettent le bien qu’ils
ont fait, une fois que leur désir est éteint. Ceux qui n’ont pas d’amour, au contraire, n’ont
jamais occasion seyante au repentir, car ce n’est point par contrainte, mais librement, comme
s’ils s’occupaient excellemment des biens de leurs demeures, qu’ils font, dans la mesure de
leurs moyens, du bien à leurs amis. Les amants considèrent en outre, et les dommages que
leur amour fit à leurs intérêts et les largesses qu’ils ont dû consentir ; puis, en y ajoutant la
peine qu’ils ont eue, ils pensent depuis longtemps avoir déjà payé à leurs aimés le juste prix
des faveurs obtenues. Par contre, ceux qui ne sont pas épris ne peuvent, ni prétexter les
affaires négligées par amour, ni mettre en ligne de compte les souffrances passées, ni alléguer
les différends familiaux qu’ils ont eus. Exempts de tous ces maux, il ne leur reste plus qu’à
s’empresser de mettre en acte tout ce qu’ils croient devoir leur donner du plaisir.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Now in the earthly likenesses of justice and temperance and all other prized possessions of the soul there dwells no luster; nay, so dull are the organs wherewith men approach their images that hardly can a few behold that which is imaged, but with beauty it is otherwise. Beauty it was ours to see in all its brightness in those days when, amidst that happy company, we beheld with our eyes that blessed vision, ourselves in the train of Zeus, others following some other god; then were we all initiated into that mystery which is rightly accounted blessed beyond all others; whole and unblemished were we that did celebrate it, untouched by the evils that awaited us in days to come; whole and unblemished likewise, free from all alloy, steadfast and blissful were the spectacles on which we gazed in the moment of final revelation; pure was the light that shone around us, and pure were we, without taint of that prison house which now we are encompassed withal, and call a body, fast bound therein as an oyster in its shell”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Necesariamente aquel cuyo imperio es el deseo, y el placer su esclavitud, hará que el amado le proporcione el mayor gozo. A un enfermo le gusta todo lo que no le contraría; pero le es desagradable lo que es igual o superior a él. El que ama, pues, no soportará de buen grado que su amado le sea mejor o igual, sino que se esforzará siempre en que le sea inferior o más débil.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Opinion is the state of mind of non-philosophers, who fail to look further than (or rise above) ordinary appearances.

[Rowe, summarising Plato's position]”
― Christopher J. Rowe, Phaedrus

“There’s no truth to that story’—that when a lover is available you should give your favors to a man who doesn’t love you instead, because he is in control of himself while the lover has lost his head. That would have been fine to say if madness were bad, pure and simple; but in fact the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“There’s no truth to that story’—that when a lover is available you should give your favors to a man who doesn’t love you instead, because he is in control of himself while the lover has lost his head. That would
have been fine to say if madness were bad, pure and simple; but in fact the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“يُروى يا عزيزي أن أول النبوءات قد صدرت عن شجرة بلوط في محراب زيوس بدورونا. و لم يكن أهل ذلك الزمان حكماءً على طريقتكم أيها الشباب، و إنما كانوا من البساطة بحيث لا يأنفون من سماع ما تنطق به شجرة بلوط أو حجارة مادام ينطوي على الحقيقة. أما أنت فلا يكفيك في الواقع إن كان الكلام صادقًا أم لا بل تريد معرفة من هو قائله و من أين جاء؟”
― Plato, Phaedrus