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The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade.

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Beauty

More quotes by Plato

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.

There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.

Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.

Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, lovers of gain?

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Plato (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.