Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer — his writing is good enough for him.
phaedrusby plato
As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.
And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.
The matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.
But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?
There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.
