#philebus

... the ancients who were better than we are, and lived nearer the gods, have transmitted this tradition to us. Here it is: that the realities called eternal derive from the one and the many, and carry, implanted with them, the determinate and the indeterminate. We should therefore, since this is the eternal order of things, seek to implant a unity in every kind of domain. We shall find it, for it is there. Once we have grasped this unity, we should examine duality, if that is present, or else trinity, or some other number. Then the same subdivisions must be made upon each one of the subordinate unities. Finally, what at the beginning appeared not only as one, and many, and unlimited at once, appears also as a definite number.

Pleasures taken in what is anticipated are often the most intensive ones and so is the disappointment when they turn out to have been false

Forgetting as a (mis)place, 3

I want to know whether any one of us would consent to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all things, but having no sense of pleasure or pain, and wholly unaffected by these and the like feelings?

I will open the door and let them all in; they shall mingle in an Homeric 'meeting of the waters.'