indeed, he taught those who frequented his threshold for free. But you referring to a rival philosopher or critic demand tribute, and take it from both the willing and the unwilling. Laertius Diogenes Laertius, the ancient biographer of philosophers also carps at the same man, because he did not imitate the chastity, fortitude, and gentleness of Plato as Xenocrates did. Truly, I cannot remain silent regarding that story of Xenocrates’s fortitude: when Dionysius The tyrant of Syracuse said to Plato, "Someone will take your head," Xenocrates, who was present, replied, "No one shall do so before they have cut off this head of mine."

MAXIMS AND PROVERBS OF PLATO.

A decorative woodcut drop cap initial 'D' showing a scholar seated at a desk in a study filled with books.
Plato used to say this regarding Aristotle and Xenocrates: "Ha! What a horse and what a donkey I have taken to harness together." Aristotle indeed required a bridle, but Xenocrates required spurs. Among his disciples was a youth who was far too elegant and excessively devoted to the care of his skin, whom Plato asked: "How long will you continue to build a prison for yourself?" Whenever he saw a man ensnared by love, he would say, "That man has died in his own body; he lives in another's." He added, "He who abandons himself for the sake of another is the most miserable of all, for he no longer possesses himself, nor does he possess the other." A certain learned friend of Plato’s begged him to lend his ears for a moment to a booklet he had published and was about to read. When Plato asked what the title of the book was, he replied, "That one must not contradict." To which Plato said, "Why then do you do this very thing? Why do you contradict those who contradict? Why do you consult me, if you forbid yourself from being contradicted?" He criticized a powerful man named Leocivus in a gathering because he had engaged in great and immoderate shouting in the senate. Plato said, "This is truly what it means to be a lion." To Diogenes the Cynic, who said that he could see these human things but could by no means see the "Ideas" Plato's Theory of Forms, Plato replied: "That is no wonder; for you have and use the eyes by which these things are seen, but you do not use the mind, by which alone those Ideas are discerned." When his disciples were marveling that Xenocrates, who was serious in every part of his life, had said something that should be received with laughter, he said, "Why do you marvel that roses and lilies sometimes grow among thorns?" To young men,
labors over idleness.

he was frequently accustomed to say: "Prefer labors to idleness, unless perhaps you think rust is better than brightness." He very often ignited the youth toward a blessed life by this reasoning: "Observe the contrary natures of virtue and pleasure. For a sudden repentance and perpetual pain follow the momentary sweetness of the latter. But brief labors and eternal pleasure follow the former." When he had seen a certain man playing with dice, he rebuked him; and when the man said, "Why do you find fault with such small things?" Plato replied, "But habit is no small thing." He was accustomed to advise the drunk and the angry to look at themselves diligently in a mirror; for they would immediately depart from such foulness. He greatly detested drunkenness and sleep. He said it mattered most for the education of childhood that children become accustomed to rejoicing only in honorable things. Otherwise, he said that pleasure was the bait of evils. He added that the health of the soul was true philosophy, while other faculties seemed not so much philosophy as ornaments. Nothing is sweeter to a healthy mind than to speak and hear the truth. For nothing is either better or more durable than truth. When certain people asked
what they should leave to their children.

what kind of possessions should especially be prepared for one's children, he said: "Those which fear neither hail, nor the violence of men, nor even Jove Jupiter/God himself." To Demodocus, who was consulting him about the education of his son, he said: "Just as care must be taken in planting and directing young trees, so must care be taken in begetting and instructing sons. Here is the labor, there the pleasure. But we must beware lest we seem asleep in the latter, while being more than vigilant in the former." To a certain Philedonus who was carping at Plato because he was no less studious and diligent in learning than in teaching, and who asked how long he wished to be a disciple, he replied: "As long as I shall not repent of becoming better and more skilled." Asked what the difference was between the skilled and the unskilled, he replied: "The same as between a doctor and a sick man." He used to say to princes that there was no more excellent kind of property than the friendship of those men who did not know how to be "shopkeepers" original: "cauponari" - meaning those who trade favors or act as sycophants. Wisdom is no less necessary to a prince than the soul is to the body. Republics would be most blessed if either philosophers rule, or at least if those who govern, by some divine fate, practice philosophy. For nothing is more pestilential than power and audacity when accompanied by ignorance. Subjects also tend to be of such a sort as the princes appear to be. A magistrate must think not of his own good, but of the public good; he must care not for just a part of the city, but for the whole.

HOW MUCH PLATO NEGLECTED HUMAN AFFAIRS, AND HOW MUCH HE LOVED DIVINE ONES.

Decorative woodcut drop cap initial 'R' depicting a figure in a garden or landscape, holding a book.
He repeated daily that only eternal things are true; temporal things are merely "like the truth" verisimilitude/shadows. He said the soul sleeps in the body, and that the things which the senses desire or fear are nothing other than dreams. Therefore, all these things must be utterly despised. And to avoid the evils with which the world is full, one must flee to eternal things; for otherwise they cannot be avoided. He himself fulfilled what he taught. For although by a certain hereditary right and the favor of the citizens he was destined to be a leader in the republic, he rejected all civil dignity entirely. Although he was very wealthy by patrimony, to his brother...