Sublime

If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.

A siege may be defined as a peace plus the inconvenience of war.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, for example, who more than two millennia later gave his name to the American city of Cincinnati, is supposed to have returned from semi-exile in the 450s BCE to become dictator and lead Roman armies to victory against their enemies before nobly retiring straight back to his farm without seeking further political glory.

The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out. These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection. As to wild beasts—there were none in their sheltered land.

Meno

He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.

The Apology

In classical Greek thought, sexuality was understood to be potentially excessive by nature, so the moral question was always how to control it, how to regulate its economy in an appropriate way. This was not achieved by legislation that permitted or forbade certain acts, but by the achievement of an art of living that involved the individual in a b