Plato quotes on soul

You think that you have no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul
Source: Plato, Alcibiades I

SOCRATES: The state or the soul, therefore,

And therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words--if you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you shall die;--if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend,--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less
Source: Plato, Alcibiades II

Then, before we see his body, should we not ask him to show us his soul, naked and undisguised? he is just of an age at which he will like to talk
Source: Plato, Charmides

SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and I believe

They all of them by just apportionment obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;--thus did they guide all mortal creatures
Source: Plato, Critias

And do you know with what you know, or with something else? With what I know; and I suppose that you mean with my soul? Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of asking a question when you are asked one? Well, I said; but then what am I to do? for I will do whatever you bid; when I do not know what you are asking, you tell me to answer nevertheless, and not to ask again
Source: Plato, Euthydemus

SOCRATES: And this applies not only to the body, but also to the soul: in either there may be that which gives the appearance of health and not the reality? GORGIAS: Yes, certainly
Source: Plato, Gorgias

And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower
Source: Plato, Ion

SOCRATES: And at present we have in view some knowledge, of which the end is the soul of youth? NICIAS: Yes
Source: Plato, Laches

You admit that wine stimulates the passions? 'Yes.' And does wine equally stimulate the reasoning faculties? 'No; it brings the soul back to a state of childhood.' In such a state a man has the least control over himself, and is, therefore, worst
Source: Plato, Laws

My present state of mind is due to our previous argument, which inclines me to believe that in general those who do wrong involuntarily are worse than those who do wrong voluntarily, and therefore I hope that you will be good to me, and not refuse to heal me; for you will do me a much greater benefit if you cure my soul of ignorance, than you would if you were to cure my body of disease
Source: Plato, Lesser Hippias

Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls
Source: Plato, Lysis

The speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done--that is the beauty of them--and they steal away our souls with their embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors who went before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than I was before
Source: Plato, Menexenus

For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons--and very good ones they were, as I thought--at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is
Source: Plato, Meno

Is it not the separation of soul and body? And to be dead is the completion of this; when the soul exists in herself, and is released from the body and the body is released from the soul, what is this but death? Just so, he replied
Source: Plato, Phaedo The Last Hours Of Socrates

Further, if we ought to shower favours on those who are the most eager suitors,--on that principle, we ought always to do good, not to the most virtuous, but to the most needy; for they are the persons who will be most relieved, and will therefore be the most grateful; and when you make a feast you should invite not your friend, but the beggar and the empty soul; for they will love you, and attend you, and come about your doors, and will be the best pleased, and the most grateful, and will invoke many a blessing on your head
Source: Plato, Phaedrus

SOCRATES: Shall we further agree-- PROTARCHUS: To what? SOCRATES: That you and I must now try to indicate some state and disposition of the soul, which has the property of making all men happy
Source: Plato, Philebus

I said: I wonder whether you know what you are doing? And what am I doing? You are going to commit your soul to the care of a man whom you call a Sophist
Source: Plato, Protagoras

STRANGER: And you are aware that this exchange of the merchant is of two kinds: it is partly concerned with food for the use of the body, and partly with the food of the soul which is bartered and received in exchange for money
Source: Plato, Sophist

In the fulness of time, when the change was to take place, and the earth-born race had all perished, and every soul had completed its proper cycle of births and been sown in the earth her appointed number of times, the pilot of the universe let the helm go, and retired to his place of view; and then Fate and innate desire reversed the motion of the world
Source: Plato, Statesman

That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover
Source: Plato, Symposium

But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age: 'Hope,' he says, 'cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey;--hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.' How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men
Source: Plato, The Republic

SOCRATES: Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth
Source: Plato, Theaetetus

Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been other than the fairest; and the creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of soul
Source: Plato, Timaeus

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