I pity you who are my companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality you are doing nothing.
the Symposiumby plato
Let him alone, he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear; do not therefore disturb him.
For, observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honourable.
Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed.
And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.
The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.
Love is a great spirit. Everything spiritual is in between god and mortal.
For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees.
All of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors.
