Plato

oth young and old, to take no care either for the body, or for riches, prior to or so much as for the soul, how it may be made most perfect, telling you that virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?

they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth.

May I succeed, if to succeed be for my good and yours, or likely to avail me in my cause!

conclusion of the whole

Vice in abundance is easy to get.

The road is smooth and begins beside you,

But the gods have put sweat between us and virtue,

and a tedious and uphill road.

Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?

Then now I think you will have no difficulty in understanding my meaning when I asked the question whether the end of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing?

Probably the youth will say to himself, in the words of Pindar, "Should I, by justice or by crooked ways, ascend a loftier tower which may be a fortress to me for all my days?"

those stories are quite unfit to be repeated