Sunday, February 7, 2010

Passages passing the ages

Three lovely exerpts from Plato's Symposium.

"There is dishonor in yielding to the base, or in a base manner; but there is honor in yielding to the good, or in an honorable manner. Base is that vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing that is in itself unstable..."

"The sexes were three in number, not, as they are now, two, male and female; there was also a third the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word 'androgynous' is preserved only as a term of reproach."

"He [Love] is of flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way undiscovered into and out of every soul of man."

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