"Platonical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hobbes, and even Wood admits that it was "very much bought up by the members [of parliament], and admired: But soon after, when they understood who the author was (for his name was not set to the book), many of the honest party rejected, and had no opinion of it" A later writer describes it as an "un-Platonic dialogue developing a scheme for the exercise of the royal prerogative through councils of state responsible to Parliament, and of which a third part should retire every year."{1} Reissued at the time under its better known title—"Plato Redivivus"{2}—it was reprinted in 1742,{3} ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... is being your husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends. While these approve my conduct, I shall not feel or regard the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also erelong assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, position. "What can I say of hers and Sir William's attention to me? They are in fact, with the exception of you and my good father, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... things of this kind that many curious people are found to be his worshipers who will never themselves pass forth "to re-behold the stars." They are unwise who find Dante so bitter and theological, so Platonic and devoted, that they cannot open his books. They little know what ambiguous planets, what dark heathen meteors move on the fringe of his great star-lit road. His Earthly Lady, as well as his Heavenly Lady, may have the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... man more liable. In the consideration of these cases it must not be forgotten that the sexual relations are much more to man or woman than is generally acknowledged. The days for the establishment of the Utopian republic of Plato are not yet with us. That Platonic love does exist is true, as it has in the past and will in the future. Scipio, refusing to accept the beautiful betrothed bride of an enemy as a present, or Joseph leaving his coat-tail in the hands of the amorous bride of the eunuch Potiphar, with the suicide of Lucretia, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... conversations will find that they are some of the most vivacious dialogues in all literature. Senior's system of recording conversations throws a curious light, by the way, upon the mechanism of the Platonic Dialogues. For some twenty-four centuries the world has wondered how much of these Dramas of the Soul is to be attributed to Socrates and how much to Plato, and the general verdict has been that in most of them ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the present tendency to unbelief has wider range and fresher foundations than our fathers knew. The belief in the natural immortality of the human soul whether of Platonic or Christian origin is shaken to an extent not known in a century. The doubts of Huxley, the denials of Haeckel had a purely scientific basis. The suspension of consciousness by sleep, by accident, by drugs, the decay of mind by old age and by disease are ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... of literary campaigning and the finest platonic discourses, d'Arthez grew bolder, and arrived every day at three o'clock. He retired at six, and returned at nine, to remain until midnight, or one in the morning, with the regularity of an ardent and impatient lover. The princess was always dressed with more or less studied elegance at the ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... The platonic love of Angelique de Guerchi for the handsome Chevalier de Moranges had resulted, as we have seen, in no practical wrong to the Duc de Vitry. After her reconciliation with her lover, brought about by the eminently satisfactory explanations she was able to give of her conduct, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... honorable and laudable is really nothing, and is only an empty circumstance set off with an unmeaning sound, can nevertheless maintain that a wise man is always happy, what, think you, may be done by the Socratic and Platonic philosophers? Some of these allow such superiority to the goods of the mind as quite to eclipse what concerns the body and all external circumstances. But others do not admit these to be goods; they make everything depend on the mind: whose disputes Carneades used, as a sort of honorary ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... (which extends beyond the limit of the tribe or group) had a 'supernatural' origin! It has been argued that 'tribal morality' is only a set of regulations based on the convenience of the elders of the tribe: is, in fact, as the Platonic Thrasymachus says, 'the interest of the strongest.' That does not appear to me to be demonstrated; but this is no place for a discussion of the origin of morals. 'The interest of the strongest,' and of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... in Miss Dickenson's bygone romances, implied in the slight shade of sentiment in her voice—wondered in fact how the doose this woman had missed her market; this was the expression his internal soliloquy used. She for her part was on the whole glad that an intensely Platonic friendship didn't admit of catechism, as she was better pleased to leave the customers in that market to the uninformed imagination of others, than to be compelled ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sense. It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of the word I. H. U. H. emanated the FIRST-BORN of God, the Universal FORM, in which are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the Infinite by the primitive ray ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... ringing through Reviews, And maids, wives, widows, smitten with my Muse, Assail me with Platonic billet-doux. From this suburban attic I'll dismount, With Coutts or Barclays open an account; Ranged in my mirror, cards, with burnish'd ends, Shall show the whole nobility my friends; That happy host with whom I choose to dine, Shall make set-parties, give his-choicest wine; And age and infancy ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... us in the end ask ourselves, here and there at least, a man who is of real account in the world of affairs, and who is—not simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or an opportunist advocate—but an impassioned promoter of the woman's suffrage movement? One knows quite well that there is. But then one suspects —one perhaps discerns by "the spirit sense"—that this impassioned ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... (1438) called in behalf of the union of the Churches (among these were Pletho and his pupil Bessarion; Nicolas Cusanus was one of the legates invited), while part were fugitives from Constantinople after its capture by the Turks in 1453. The Platonic Academy, whose most celebrated member, Marsilius Ficinus, translated Plato and the Neoplatonists into Latin, was founded in 1440 on the suggestion of Georgius Gemistus Pletho[1] under the patronage of Cosimo dei Medici. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... were impressed with this idea. It was a favorite theme of the Arab philosophers and many Mahomedan Sufis. The Jews adopted it after the Babylonian captivity. Philo of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Christ, preached amongst the Hebrews the Platonic idea of the pre-existence and rebirth of human souls. Philo says: "The company of disembodied souls is distributed in various orders. The law of some of them is to enter mortal bodies, and after certain prescribed periods be again set free." John the Baptist was according to ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... artistic values; its productions survive to convict it of what he called Philistinism; but it is no longer devoid of taste or indifferent to beauty. And it has never been a contemptible artist in life. Mr Bridges describes the progress of vulgarity as an inverted Platonic progress. We descend, he says, from ugly forms to ugly conduct, and from ugly conduct to ugly principles, till we finally arrive at the absolute ugliness which is vulgarity. This identification of insensibility to beauty ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... of strong will and unconventional temperament who took her own way openly, having nothing to conceal, and therefore nothing to fear. She made a feature of her friendship with the tragic Englishman; she even dwelt upon it and paraded it for the pretense of blunt and Platonic friendship was the cloud with which she concealed the fire of their illicit relation. The trip on the "Leyla" to Brusa had tortured Dion. Since the episode in the pavilion a more refined torment had been his. Mrs. Clarke had not allowed him to escape from the social ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... forms at the time to which I refer. The community of plan which is observable in each great group of animals was hypostatised into a Platonic idea with the appropriate name of "archetype," and we were told, as a disciple of Philo-Judaeus might have told us, that this realistic figment was "the archetypal light" by which Nature has been guided amidst the "wreck of worlds." So, again, another ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... you know that you are even Colonel Rufford's daughter?" She did not know what these words meant. She thought of her mother as sleeping beneath the arches whilst the snow fell. That was the impression conveyed to her mind by the words "on the streets". A Platonic sense of duty gave her the idea that she ought to go to comfort her mother—the mother that bore her, though she hardly knew what the words meant. At the same time she knew that her mother had left her father with another man—therefore she pitied her ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... example, that we attempt to deal decoratively which such simple figures as the three lowest Platonic solids—the tetrahedron, the hexahedron, and the octahedron. [Figure 12.] Their projection on a plane yields a rhythmical division of space, because of their inherent symmetry. These projections would correspond to the network of lines seen in looking through a glass paperweight of the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude. A negro slave, for instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African in the English service only as one to thirty-five! Freedom is not, therefore, a mere abstract dream, a beautiful name, a Platonic aspiration: it is interwoven with the most practical of all blessings,—life itself! And can you say fairly that by laws labour cannot be lightened and poverty diminished? We have granted already that since there are degrees in discontent, there is a difference between the peasant and the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not only platonic, but sexual as well. The growing person needs help in acquiring a potential capacity for mutual, satisfying intimacy with a partner of the opposite sex. Heterosexual mutuality has religious significance, since sexual ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... ascribed to Charlotte von Stein, a woman in whom, for some twelve years of his life, he found his muse and his madonna. His letters often address her in terms of idolatrous endearment. She was a wife and a mother, but Weimar society regarded her relation to Goethe as a platonic attachment not to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Italy; its reappearance in last century B.C. under the influence of Posidonius, who combined Stoicism with Platonic Pythagoreanism. Cicero affected by this revival; his Somnium Scipionis and other later works. His mysticism takes practical form on the death of his daughter; letters to Atticus about a fanum. Individualisation ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... manifestation of the rough, the gross, the instinctive, and offer for meditation this saying of Michelet: "Cloth woven by a weaver is just as natural as that a spider weaves. All is in one Being, all is in the Idea and for the Idea, the latter being understood in the way Platonic substantialism has been interpreted...." ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... fine pearls, and her idea had been that she had got all there was to be got from him. In fact, she had not mentioned this little love-idyll even to her husband. Suddenly, however, she remembered that they two had been dear, dear friends—perfectly platonic friends, of course—and she felt justified in writing a sweet letter to Josephine asking tactfully for news of Max. She put her point charmingly, and begged that she might be allowed to call on dear Mrs. Doran-Reeves, to ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... In the Platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precede the fact. Every step of progress is a defection from that idea. The dogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. It aims to give us the point of departure by which we are to recognise the nature of sin. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... with apparent show of utter ruin: though he were (for that time) an excellent orator, came not among them upon trust of figurative speeches, or cunning insinuations: and much less, with far-fetched maxims of philosophy, which (especially if they were Platonic [Footnote: Alluding to the inscription over the door of Plato's Academy: No entrance here without Geometry.)], they must have learned geometry before they could well have conceived: but forsooth he behaves himself, like a ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... a refreshing draught of the beer, and then he looked up at a window, and bestowed a platonic wink on a young lady who was peeling potatoes thereat. Then he opened the paper, and folded it so as to get the police reports outwards; and this being a vexatious and difficult thing to do, when there is any wind stirring, he took another ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. The whole thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... distinguished nor ambitious, had yet a real charm for her. Not that for a moment she would think seriously of such a man! That would he simply idiotic! But it would be very nice to have a little innocent flirtation with him, or perhaps a "Platonic friendship! "—her phrase, not mine. What could she have to do with Plato, who, when she said I, was aware only of a neat bundle of foolish desires, not the God at ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... had lived on very bad terms with her late husband, that she had on many occasions exhibited strong symptoms of possessing a very vindictive temper, and that during the farmer's lifetime she had openly manifested rather more than a Platonic preference for the man whom she subsequently married. Suspicion was generally excited: people began to doubt whether the first husband had died fairly. At length the proper order was applied for, and his body was disinterred. On ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... find A spirit far more truly Christian In them than in the ravings of the sour-soul'd Savonarola. [Prolonged cries of 'Death to the Sour-Souled Savonarola!' Several cobblers detach themselves from the crowd and rush away to read the Platonic Dialogues. Enter SAVONAROLA. The crowd, as he makes his way through it, gives up all further control of its feelings, and makes a noise for which even the best zoologists might not find a good comparison. The staves and bill-hooks ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... of these three days showed him that if Capadose was an abundant he was not a malignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised itself mainly on subjects of small direct importance. 'He is the liar platonic,' he said to himself; 'he is disinterested, he doesn't operate with a hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It is art for art and he is prompted by the love of beauty. He has an inner vision of what might have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... and the Four Hymns rank undoubtedly highest. For splendour of imagery, for harmony of verse, for delicate taste and real passion, the Epithalamion excels all other poems of its class, and the Four Hymns express a rapture of Platonic enthusiasm, which may indeed be answerable for the unreadable Psyches and Psychozoias of the next age, but which is itself married to immortal ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... intended to conceal it. In short, I acquitted myself so well with both ladies, that a family intimacy was consented to. I renewed my visits; and we accounted to one another's honour, by entering upon a kind of Platonic system, in which sex was to have no ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... only the task of formulating what was already latent in the poets and historians of their land; and it was the recollection of the fulness of such instruction in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Platonic Dialogues, with their echo in the Officia of Cicero, as if in them were stored up all the treasures of antiquity, that raised our Sir Thomas into ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... passion of this officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble. He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the actions of a young man's life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when blue; a love without ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... introduction to her. Although rich, he found her occupying a small lodging in Henry street, where she lived secluded and alone. "Over the chimney-piece of the front drawing-room was suspended the picture of her Platonic idolater. It was a half-length portrait, and had been given her by the man of whose adoration she was so virtuously vain." While Sheil was striving to image to himself the fascinations of the "dangerous Papist," the door was opened: a volume of smoke had previously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... natives—whom some may choose to call a fantast (if they honour him with their consideration so far), but whom others may see only as one that gave objective continuity and a name to a delicate dream which in a vaguer form is more or less common to all men, and is by no means new to Platonic philosophers. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... face. He looked upon Mrs. Slapman as a masculine mind and soul, of uncommon depth, made powerfully magnetic by its enshrinement in a feminine form. Overtop once told Matthew Maltboy, that he knew, in his own experience, the meaning of Platonic love. But Matthew, who was a sad materialist even in his sentimental moods, laughed at him, and winked. Overtop positively felt hurt at this unkind reception of his confidences, and never again alluded to the state of his feelings toward Mrs. Slapman, until subsequent occurrences made ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... conceded, "if all men grasped this great truth, there would be an end of artists; and in time, by consequence, of critics, who live by them and for whom they exist. Therefore I keep my discovery as a Platonic secret, and utter it but occasionally, in my cups, and when"—with a severe glance at Mr. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... had gradually been eliminating the Neo-Platonic, mystic element, and returning to pure Aristotelianism. In Averroes, who professed to be merely a commentator on Aristotle, this tendency reached its climax; and though he still regarded the pseudo-Aristotelian works as genuine, and did not entirely escape their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... saying he asked pardon." To this 'riding surveyor' we owe also an indication that Fielding found room in the narrow confines of a cabin for his Plato; for the rude insolence of that functionary recalls to his mind the Platonic theory of the divine original of rulers, and he proceeds to quote a long passage from the Laws, which even his ready scholarship could scarce ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... greatly like to have occupied the position of stepmother to "those nice girls," but Anthony, universal lover as he was within strictly platonic limits, showed no desire to give his girls anything of the sort. Jan satisfied his craving for a gracious and well-ordered comfort in all his surroundings. Fay gratified his aesthetic appreciation of beauty and gentleness. What would he do with a third ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... still calls itself Platonic, the questions and experiments of the new learning are beginning. These youths are here to represent the new philosophy, which is science, in the act of taking its first step. The subject is presented here in large masses. But this central group, at least, is composed of living ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... her father's invitation to call upon them. Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation. Whether she wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether, like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the unheroic, unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine humor, did ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... enormous quantities of punch. Could he be considered a match for the extremely clever Mlle. Necker, whose father had an enormous fortune, and who was herself considered a gem of wit and mental power, ready to discuss political economy, or the romantic movement of socialism, or platonic love? ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... not in this any question of the bestial depravity which deliberately debauches the young and innocent: it is a question of the kind of friendship glorified by Plato. And those who uphold the Platonic view are not always debauchees but sometimes men and women who, however incomprehensibly, still sincerely believe that they and not we who oppose them are the true idealists. This is why it is worth while to state our reasons for our profound disagreement, and to do so as intelligently ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... had always stated her belief in platonic friendship, but she had never been inconvenienced by having to carry it out. One thing had always led to another. She had imagined that Lionel (in his relations with her) would be a happy mixture of Lancelot and Galahad. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... declined somewhat in the last few hours, it must be owned, from the celestial altitudes he had reached before luncheon. Some part of his cousin's discourse had been dangerously intimate in character, suggesting situations quite other than platonic. To him there appeared a noble innocence in her treatment of matters not usually spoken of. He had listened with a certain reverent amazement. Only out of purity of mind could such speech come. And yet an undeniable effect remained, and it was not altogether elevating. Richard ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by no means proves the young man's earlier desires merely "Platonic;" and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed fire and ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... many social and psychical relationships of men and women who have no mutual interests relating to the biological processes of race perpetuation. Of course, the psychologist recognizes that far back of the platonic contact of the sexes on social and intellectual lines is the suppressed and primal instinct that provides physical unions for race perpetuation. However, this is of no practical interest, for, as a matter of fact, the primal instincts are quite subconscious in the usual social relations ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... this outrage—not to dislike them in consequence. There were so many things that she hadn't yet learned to dislike, in spite of her friend's earnest efforts to teach her. She had the idea vividly (that was the marvel) of the cruelty of man, of his immemorial injustice; but it remained abstract, platonic; she didn't detest him in consequence. What was the use of her having that sharp, inspired vision of the history of the sex (it was, as she had said herself, exactly like Joan of Arc's absolutely supernatural apprehension of the state of France) if she wasn't going to carry ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... in Julian's days. When the rescript came out which forbade the Galileans to teach the classics, they promptly undertook to form a Christian literature by throwing Scripture into classical forms. The Old Testament was turned into Homeric verse, the New into Platonic dialogues. Here again Apollinarius was premature. There was indeed no reason why Christianity should not have as good a literature as heathenism, but it would have to be a growth of many ages. In doctrine Apollinarius was a staunch Nicene, and one of the chief allies of Athanasius ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... our day. Moral Influence of Friendships between Men and Women. Analysis of Platonic Love. Laura and Petrarch. Beatrice and Dante. Heloise and Abelard. Danger and Safety of Platonic Love. Countess Matilda and Hildebrand. The "Woldemar" of Jacobi. Influence of Chivalry in developing Friendships ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... part of the lectures of Archer Butler of Dublin, is devoted to the Platonic philosophy. It is a criticism and an eulogium. No modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato, his ideal ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the courtesy of the friend, and never the tenderness of the lover. Even when the maiden presented him with the silk purse to which she had given so many hours of toil, his thanks, though warm, were distinctly platonic. Both piqued and humiliated at his conduct, the girl was glad enough when, on the morning of the third day, they set out on their journey, and she almost welcomed the advent of Bagby, who overtook them as they were taking their noon ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... detailed, and are not without their influence here. Winkelmann was the parasite of the fragments that fell from the conversation or the tablets of Mengs—a deep scholar, and better fitted to comment on a classic than to give lessons on art and style, he reasoned himself into frigid reveries and Platonic dreams on beauty. As far as the taste or the instruction of his tutor directed, he is right when they are; and between his own learning and the tuition of the other, his history of art delivers a specious system, and a prodigious number of useful observations." "To him Germany owes the shackles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... retiring, of such hasty temper and brusque manners, would scarcely be attracted to women. But Beethoven, it is said, was very susceptible to the charm of the opposite sex. He was however, most careful and high-souled in all his relations with women. He was frequently in love, but it was usually a Platonic affection. For the Countess Julie Guicciardi he protested the most passionate love, which was in a measure returned. She was doubtless his "immortal beloved," whose name vibrates through the Adagio of the "Moonlight Sonata," which ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern Roman republican; namely,—that he would have no objection to a king, or to Caesar, a monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... life that seems the most desirable is the method which the Platonic Socrates employed. Perhaps he was an ideal figure; but yet there are few figures more real. There we have an elderly man of incomparable ugliness, who is yet delightfully and perennially youthful, bubbling over with interest, affection, courtesy, humour, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and so pitiful, it would have been amusing to have heard the conditions of that friendship—they were as numerous as the preliminaries of an article of peace. They made all arrangements; their friendship was to be of the purest and most platonic nature; there was to be nothing said which would remind them of the past; he was to shake hands with her when he came and when he went; he might pay her a visit twice or three times a week; if they met, they were to ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... masters, silver-voiced singing boys decoyed from some church, and cynical humanists escaped from the faggot or the gallows, were expected to bring home, together with the newest pastoral dramas, lewd novels, Platonic philosophy and madrigals set in complicated counterpoint; stories of hideous wickedness, of the murders and rapes and poisonings committed by the dukes and duchesses, the nobles and senators, in whose palaces they had so lately supped and danced. The crimes of Italy fascinated ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Italy—and gave the Turks her moral and material support in their struggle with the Greeks; while England, though refusing to reverse her policy in favour of their enemies, contented herself with giving the Greeks only a platonic encouragement, which they were unwise enough to take for more than it ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... geometrical, for it proceeds on the motion of a point: the words "on account of the simplicity of the impulsive motion, such a line must be either straight or circular" will suffice to show how Platonic it is. Taylor certainly professed a kind of heathenism. D'lsraeli said, "Mr. T. Taylor, the Platonic philosopher and the modern Plethon,[423] consonant to that philosophy, professes polytheism." Taylor printed this in large type, in a page ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the Saviour. His doings as described by Philostratus are extraordinary and incredible, and he was put forward by the Eclectics in opposition to the unique powers claimed by Christ and believed in by His followers. Apollonius is said to have studied the philosophy of the Platonic, Sceptic, Epicurean, Peripatetic and Pythagorean schools, and to have adopted that of Pythagoras. He schooled himself in early manhood in the asceticism of that philosophy. He abstained from animal food and strong drink, wore white linen ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... modern fable and invention, as was just enough to shew, that the contrivers of them neither knew how to lye, nor speak truth. In these voluminous extravagances, Love and Honour supplied the place of Life and Manners. But the over-refinement of Platonic sentiments always sinks into the dross and feces of that Passion. For in attempting a more natural representation of it, in the little amatory Novels, which succeeded these heavier Volumes, tho' the Writers avoided the dryness of ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... women, whether a bride or a long-time wife?" The answer is, Simply those conditions of the organs in which they are not properly prepared, by anticipation and desire, to receive a foreign body. The modest one craves only refined and platonic love at first, and if husbands, new and old, would only realize this plain truth, wife-torturing would cease and the happiness of each one of all human ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... quotation is from a paper read by the Dean of St Paul's before the Aristotelian Society in May of 1919. Dr Inge's paper is entitled 'Platonism and Human Immortality,' and in it there occurs the following statement: 'To sum up. The Platonic doctrine of immortality rests on the independence of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is not a world of unrealised ideals, over against a real world of unspiritual fact. It is, on the contrary, the real world, of which we have a true though very ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... Platonic philosopher, had, it is said, a familiar demon, who obeyed him from the moment he called him, and was superior in his nature to the common genii; he was of the order of gods, and Plotinus paid continual attention to this divine guardian. This it was which led him to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... evening, when you came rushing in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'm drunk with her.' And how I couldn't understand? For I thought her plain, just as I still do.—But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it ... hm! ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at least two; ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... allegiance, which swam in floods of passionate devotion to her person. Christopher Hatton, Sir Henry Lee, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, a race of gallants, had knelt upon this pleasant sward. Here they had declared a devotion that, historically platonic, had a personal passion which, if rewarded by no personal requital, must have been an expensive outlay ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... possibility that remained was a Platonic friendship, and Briscoe accepted the situation in excellent humour. 'Ever since he came to know himself,' again it is Moll that speaks, 'he always deported himself to me with an abundance of regard, calling me his Aunt.' And his aunt she remained unto the end, bound to him ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Greek a form or an image. The word signified in early philosophical use the archetype or primal image which the Platonic philosophy supposed to be the model or pattern that existing objects imperfectly embody. This high sense has nearly disappeared from the word idea, and has been largely appropriated by ideal, tho something of the original meaning still appears when in theological or philosophical language ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... these lines were written under the influence of spleen. A belief in the existence of a superior Being was a necessity for the fiery and tender nature of Tasso. He was, besides, far too Platonic to try to reconcile such contrary opinions. When he wrote those lines, he probably was in want of a piece of bread ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... fervid and impassioned vein appealed to the young man's mind. His heart was touched by the manifest holiness of the good bishop's life and conduct, especially when he contrasted them with those of the Manicheans with whom he had so long been associated. The study of Platonic philosophy urged him on to celestial heights and made him gaze on the infinite nature of God. The Epistles of St. Paul riveted his attention in his search after purest truth, and joined to the pious prayers of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... material supposed to be beyond the reach of sense and reason. It carries us back to the strangely illusive "mysteries" of the Greeks, but is more definitely used in connection with the most characteristic subtleties of the wizard East, and with certain developments of the Platonic philosophy. Extended exposition is not required. Suffice it to state what may fairly be regarded as the three fundamental principles, or doctrines, on which mystics of the orthodox schools generally depend. These principles will be subjected to a free but friendly criticism: considerable ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Edessa and Nisibis, they established schools of learning which for several centuries were the most famous in the world. The entire works of Aristotle were turned into Syriac; among them several spurious ones of Neo-Platonic origin, notably the famous 'Liber de Causis' and the 'Theology of Aristotle.' Thus a Neo-Platonic Aristotle came to rule Eastern learning. On the rise of Islam, this Aristotle was borrowed by the Muslims, and became ruler of their schools at Bagdad, Basra, and other places,—schools which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Chamber, doubtless having the then impending elections in view, voted to abolish the Secret Service Fund of the Ministry of the Interior. It was a Platonic vote, referring only to the Budget of 1890, nor did it take effect. But on December 14, 1889, M. Constans, having made the re-establishment of this fund a cabinet question, got up in the Chamber and boldly declared that he wanted a Secret Service Fund of 1,600,000 fr., or about 64,000l. sterling; ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the Valori are to be found in the church of St. Proculus. Macchiavelli mentions Bartolomeo Valori among the Cittadini d' autorita, and, according to Nardi, he was Gonfaloniere in the first two months of the years 1402, 1408, and 1420. He was also one of the Platonic Academy that Ficino assembled around him. In this Diary of Sanuto will be found many minute and interesting details respecting Savonarola, and the relation of the tragical death of Francisco Valor, who had also been several times Gontaloniere, ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... might have written to her husband. She knew he would surely condemn the renewal of her association with Mr. Willett, but so long as he wasn't there to say so, and so long as she intended the association to be purely platonic, as a rebuke to all who had rebuked her, she proposed to assume that ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... originator of the doctrine we are just now considering gives us to understand, it would compromise the solution of questions by the intoxication of logic, and the ambition of perfect system; if, consequently, it is to be worshipped like a motionless and inactive divinity, how could this platonic satisfaction suffice us? Would not the opponents of economic doctrines be disposed to acknowledge all the principles, provided the consequences to be drawn from them were left to themselves; and would ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... divided themselves from the senate, with apparent show of utter ruin, though he were, for that time, an excellent orator, came not among them upon trust, either of figurative speeches, or cunning insinuations, and much less with far-fetched maxims of philosophy, which, especially if they were Platonic, they must have learned geometry before they could have conceived; but, forsooth, he behaveth himself like a homely and familiar poet. He telleth them a tale, that there was a time when all the parts of the body made a mutinous conspiracy against ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... "Well, young man, to begin with, you were much too flustered. It made you appear overanxious. On the other hand, I am at an age where I can be strictly platonic. She was on guard against you, but she knows she has very little to fear ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... names, and having direct reference to particular persons, places, sects, or nations, should begin with capitals; as, "Platonic, Newtonian, Greek, or Grecian, Romish, or Roman, Italic, or Italian, German, or Germanic, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese, Genoese, French, Dutch, Scotch, Welsh:" so, perhaps, "to Platonize, Grecize, Romanize, Italicize, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... haste To reach out for the cup that is proffered anew. A certain respect to my sorrows is due. I am weary of love as men know it. The calm Of a sweet, tranquil friendship would act like a balm On the wounds of my heart; that platonic regard, Which we read of in books, or hear sung by the bard, But so seldom can find when we want it. I thought, For a time, you had conquered mere self, and had brought Such a friendship to comfort and rest me. But no, That dream, like full many another, ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... distinguished for a play upon words. The following is supposed to have been written by one Zebel Rock, a stone-cutter, to a young lady for whom he cherished a love somewhat more than Platonic: ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the naked sword. I cannot picture to myself a condition of things in which the Prime Minister, with his record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of that kind.... I say this plainly. No British statesman, no matter what his platonic affection for Home Rule may have been in the past, no matter what party he may belong to, who by his conduct once again teaches the Irish people the lesson that any National leader who, taking his political life in ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... modification—of the first cause, the reason, or Logos, and the soul or spirit of the universe. His poetical imagination sometimes fixed and animated these metaphysical abstractions; the three archical on original principles were represented in the Platonic system as three Gods, united with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation; and the Logos was particularly considered under the more accessible character of the Son of an Eternal Father, and the Creator and Governor of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Charteris pointed out, there could be no possible objection to this conspiracy, since they had decided that their friendship was to be of a purely platonic nature. It was a severe trial to him, he confessed, to be forced to put aside certain dreams he had had of the future—mad dreams, perhaps, but such as had seemed very dear and very plausible to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and the girl will see a great deal of each other, unless you banish or imprison the Mowbrays. There'll be many dances together, many calls; in fact, a serial romance instead of a short story. Why shouldn't his Majesty know the pleasure of a—platonic friendship with a beautiful and charming ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... physician. To the young and ardent Marsilio, Plato became a god and Gemisthos not less than divine for bringing the tidings. He kept a lamp always burning before Plato's bust, and later founded the Platonic Academy, at which Plato's works were discussed, orations delivered, and new dialogues exchanged, between such keen minds as Marsilio, Pulci, Landini, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leon Battista Alberti, the architect and scholar, Pico dell a Mirandola, the precocious disputant and aristocratic mystic, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Belinda, 'the chaste delight, the calm happiness, of this one week of Platonic love, is too much for me!' Cymon was about to suggest that it was too little for him, but he stopped ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,—"In hours, sir, he takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours, sir, I believe he is possessed ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of the Republic. In the conversation between Dr Hodgson and George Pelham, when George Pelham promised that if he were the first to die and if he found that he had another life he would do all that he could to prove its existence, they referred to the old Platonic myth. In the communications of the so-called George Pelham allusion was made to the allegory, and that justifies me ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... his confidence; but the thought of Lynda gave him a bad moment now and then. He could not easily depose her from the most sacred memories of his life, but gradually he grew to believe that her relations to him were—had always been—platonic; and that she, in the new scheme, would play no small part in ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... that there was no danger. His little affair with Mrs Lupex was quite platonic and safe. As for doing any real harm, his principles, as he assured his friend, were too high. Mrs Lupex was a woman of talent, whom no one seemed to understand, and, therefore, he had taken some pleasure in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the pen, being an American,—at the prospect of such a heterogeneous assembly of men and women, you will suppose, my dear lady, that I am about to embark upon the cerulean waters of a potentially platonic republic, humbly steering my craft by the charts of a recent voyager, who, after making a noble but ineffectual attempt to discover the Isles of the Blessed, appears to have stumbled into the drawing-rooms ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... analogy which helps us to form these intuitive or platonic ideas. It was through analogy that Goethe arrived at his great discoveries in natural science, and I only repeat what such men as Johannes Mueller, Baer, and Helmholtz have been willing to acknowledge, when I say that the poet's eye has been as keen as that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... represent it or not. It can DO nothing to the quality beyond resembling it, simply because an abstract quality is a thing to which nothing can be done. Being without context or environment or principium individuationis, a quiddity with no haecceity, a platonic idea, even duplicate editions of such a quality (were they possible), would be indiscernible, and no sign could be given, no result altered, whether the feeling I meant to stand for this edition or for that, or whether it simply ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... best understood as a conscious effort to apply the allegorical technique of Canticles to the classical beatus ille-themes,[5] just as his thought presents an interesting combination of Stoic and Platonic ideas. ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... of humor is excellently illustrated in Greek literature, where is to be found many a joke at which we are laughing to-day, as others have laughed through the centuries. Half a thousand years before the Christian era, a platonic philosopher at Alexandria, by name Hierocles, grouped twenty-one jests in a volume under the title, "Asteia." Some of them are still current with us as typical Irish bulls. Among these were accounts of the "Safety-first" enthusiast who determined never to enter the water until he had ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... birthright of all. And if it be answered that however truly philosophic, however sacredly pure, his happiness may have been, yet its wisdom and its holiness were without an effort, and, that it is effort which makes the philosopher and the saint: then we must use in answer his own Platonic scheme of things, to express a thought which we can but dimly apprehend; and we must say that though progress be inevitably linked in our minds with struggle, yet neither do we conceive of struggle ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... expressed that Isabella d'Este "may be regarded as the most splendid realization of the Renaissance ideal of woman."[2268] Vittoria Colonna has been more generally accorded that position. She is doubly interesting for her Platonic relation to Michael Angelo, who was fifteen years her senior,[2269] and for her personal character. The title "bastard" was often worn with pride. In royal houses it happened often that the illegitimate branch took the throne on the failure ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... delicious villa of the Medici, with Politian, Chalcondyles, and other men of learning; and there, in the calm evenings of summer, under that glorious Tuscan sky, they dreamt romantic visions of the Platonic philosophy. When they returned to England, these learned men laid before the youth of Oxford the marvellous treasures of the Greek language." We are repaying the debt, by sending to that land a better philosophy than any these ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... of special indebtedness Cicero, in composing the Cato Maior, was no doubt under obligations of a more general kind to the Greeks. The form of the dialogue is Greek, and Aristotelian rather than Platonic.[19] But further, it is highly probable that Cicero owed to some particular Greek dialogue on Old Age the general outline of the arguments he there brings forward. Many of the Greek illustrative allusions may have had the same origin, though ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... clearly that the especial strength of evil lay, as the philosophers had seen, in matter, it was so far a conclusion which both Jew and Persian were ready to accept; the naked Aristotelic view of it being most acceptable to the Persian, the Platonic to the Hellenistic Jew. But the purer theology of the Jew forced him to look for a solution of the question which Plato had left doubtful, and to explain how evil had crept into matter. He could not allow that what God had created could be of its own nature imperfect. God made it very good; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... [320] [Alexander's platonic attachment to the Baronne de Kruedener (Barbe Julie de Wietenhoff), beauty, novelist, illuminee, was the source of amusement rather than scandal. The Baronne, then in her fiftieth year, was the channel through which Franz Bader's theory or doctrine of the "Holy Alliance" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... asserted that Washington loved the wife of his friend George William Fairfax, but the evidence has not been produced. On the contrary, though the two corresponded, it was in a purely platonic fashion, very different from the strain of lovers, and that the correspondence implied nothing is to be found in the fact that he and Sally Carlyle (another Fairfax daughter) also wrote each other quite as frequently and on the same friendly footing; ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... "Theology of Aristotle,"[6] and that known as the "Liber de Causis."[7] Both were attributed to Aristotle in the middle ages by Jews and Arabs alike, but it has been shown recently[8] that the former represents extracts from the works of Plotinus, the head of the Neo-Platonic school of philosophy, while the latter is derived from a treatise of Proclus, a ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers in public misfortunes, according ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
