Plato Quotes About Heaven
-
From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.
→ -
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
→ -
In heaven there is laid up a pattern which he who chooses may behold, and beholding, set his own house in order. The time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the Universal Light which lightens all things. With the eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable which neither injure nor are injured - these they cannot help imitating. But I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of the soul which by the right direction is re-illumined, and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes.
→ -
We are too feeble and sluggish to make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the true heaven.
→ -
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.
→ -
Would that I were the heaven, that I might be all full of love-lit eyes to gaze on thee.
→ -
And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves, then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven...Last of all he will be able to see the sun.
→ -
Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe. From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, unto the race of mortals.
→ -
But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?
→ -
Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.
→ -
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.
→ -
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted.
→