"Platonical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauty, in the humbler walks of life, who was quite unappropriated, except by the imagination of the poet, and whose fame has passed into the Phillis or Amaryllis ideal of Highland accomplishment and grace. Macdonald was married to a scold, and though his actual relations with Morag were of the Platonic kind, he was persuaded to a retractation, entitled the "Disparagement of Morag," which is sometimes recited as a companion piece to the present. The consideration of brevity must plead our apology with the Celtic readers for omitting many ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... last line of the old Sanscrit story is the only veracious thing in it. Perhaps it is all true. Who can answer? Was there ever a great thing whose origin was not in some doubt? If so with the Iliad, with Platonic Dialogues, with Shakspearian Plays, how naturally so with Chess! The historic sinew of the above would seem to be, that Schatrenschar, the Oriental word for Chess, is the name of a very ancient and learned astronomer of Persia; how much mythologic fat has enveloped said sinew the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... see any beauty in it. Coleridge says: "And when at last the poor thing is toiled and hammered into fit shape, it is in general racked and tortured prose rather than anything resembling poetry." Though Lord Byron wrote a few himself he defined the sonnet as "The most puling, petrifying, stupidly Platonic composition." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... eloquently with Fate, when the contest is not to be determined on the spot, but by quiet and remote people coolly reading his speech several hours or days later? Even if we were vagarying into imbecility, like the wildest Neo-Platonic hierophants, like the monkish chroniclers of the Middle Ages, like other romantic and fantastic theorists who have leaped out of human nature into a purely artificial realm, we should not know it, because we are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary hills he fared, Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near— Close to her passing, in indifference drear, His silent sandals swept the mossy green; So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen She stood: he pass'd, shut up in mysteries, His mind wrapp'd like his mantle, while her eyes Follow'd his steps, ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... the moment my eye fell upon them my only remaining daughter was gazing up into the face of her male companion with that peculiar look of absorbed attention which has so often wrought the ruin of Platonic friendship. It entered like iron into my parental soul, already quivering with its recent wound, and I murmured to myself, "Oh, my ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... analysis of the real and apparent (Schleiermacher); and both may be brought into relation with the Apology as illustrating the personal life of Socrates. The Philebus, too, may with equal reason be placed either after or before what, in the language of Thrasyllus, may be called the Second Platonic Trilogy. Both the Parmenides and the Sophist, and still more the Theaetetus, have points of affinity with the Cratylus, in which the principles of rest and motion are again contrasted, and the Sophistical or Protagorean theory ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... which had nothing to do with Palestine, but were taken over from the old Hellenic or Hellenistic culture. But the residuum was less Jewish than Teutonic. On one side, indeed, the Reformation was a return to Hellenism from Romanism. Early Christian philosophy was mainly Platonic; early Christian ethics (as exemplified especially in writers like Ambrose) were mainly Stoical. There had been a considerable fusion of Plato and the Stoa among the Neoplatonists, so that it was easy for the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... unusually tender friendship be called which he professed for me, and, as I may say, claimed in return from me? I know that he has no notion of the love called Platonic. Nor have I: I think it, in general, a dangerous allowance; and, with regard to our sex, a very unequal one; since, while the man has nothing to fear, the woman has every thing, from the privileges that may be claimed, in an acknowledged confidence, especially ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... took kindly to the havanera, the bull-fights, the Paseo, and the style of flirtation preferred by the Mexican women. For this they soon coined a French word, noviotage,* and thus expressed the semi-Platonic love-making of indefinite duration and undefined limits which with the natives usually culminates in marriage, after a prolonged term of years, but which with foreigners seldom culminated at all, for lack of time. They "played the bear,"** and ogled their chosen one from the street or at the Alameda, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... her eyebrows a little, then letting her gaze rest full on mine. "That is interesting. I am a believer in platonic friendships. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... firstborn, said: "The child has eyes like the fish-pools of Heshbon, with wondrous depth of intelligent gaze." But, though a poet, it would be a great error to suppose that Lyall was an idealist, if by that term is meant one who, after a platonic fashion, indulges in ideas which are wholly visionary and unpractical. He had, indeed, ideals. No man of his imagination and mental calibre could be without them. But they were ideals based on a solid foundation of facts. It was here that, in spite of some sympathy based on common literary ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be the meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very real metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun and stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any man ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and, above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart down to their nests like so many larks, and, if they cannot find them, fret like the French Corinne. Goethe's Makaria was born of the stars. Mr. Flint's Platonic old lady a lusus naturae, and the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... custom as synonymous with substance, both material and spiritual. That is, it is applied to what excites feelings and has attributes, but not to feelings and attributes themselves; and if we called extension, virtue, &c., beings, we should be accused of believing in the Platonic self-existing ideas, or Epicurus's sensible forms—in short, of deeming attributes substances. To fill this gap, the abstract, entity, was made into a concrete, equivalent to being. Yet even entity implies, though not so much as being, the notion of substance. In fact, every ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... not leave you in that summary fashion, after so long," he said, "after so long, Pauline! Well—I have lived to be of some service to you—or so I think. Whether Platonic or not, you had better not encourage his reverence to that extent again, do you hear? A veritable Cassius of a man! And, by the way, you are looking very well just now, lady dear. I ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... which exists, and has at all times existed, chiefly for the purpose of exposing the vanity and confounding the pretensions of what is called the "science of the human mind." The turning-round of thought from psychology to metaphysic is the true interpretation of the Platonic conversion of the soul from ignorance to knowledge—from mere opinion to certainty and satisfaction: in other words, from a discipline in which the thinking is only apparent, to a discipline in which the thinking is real. Ordinary observation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... let 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 ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... a little book wherein was entered the passe-parole of every pretty woman; age; lovers platonic! When a woman became a grandmother, I put a black mark against her name, for I have always held," continued the nobleman, wagging his head, "that a woman who is a grandmother has no business to deceive a younger generation of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Mr. Fett 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
... maintained by a host of philosophers, at the head of whom stands the great Plato, that temperate sage, who threw the cold water of philosophy on the form of sexual intercourse, and inculcated the doctrine of Platonic love—an exquisitely refined intercourse, but much better adapted to the ideal inhabitants of his imaginary island of Atlantis than to the sturdy race, composed of rebellious flesh and blood, which populates the little matter-of-fact island ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of Visual Form? The older writers on what we now know as the science of art did not ask themselves this question. Although we are accustomed to hear that order, symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in particular the Platonic, formula for beauty, we observe, on examining the passages cited in evidence, that it is rather the moral quality appertaining to these characteristics that determines them as beautiful; symmetry is beautiful, because harmonious, and inducing order and self-restraint. Aristotle's ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... him, perhaps more perfect and helpful than any she had yet known; but they had met, and in that one glance had been revealed to her a natural affinity deeper than any of which she had ever dreamed, and the impossibility of a calm, Platonic friendship between kindred spirits such ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections in himself; and in an ecstatic state, wherein all individuality vanishes, he would realize a union, or identity, with the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in the long run satisfy neither the trained intellects nor the unthinking common people of Japan? Is it far from the truth to suspect that, even when accepted by the Japanese courtiers and nobles, they were received, only too often, in a Platonic, not to say a Pickwickian, sense? The Japanese is too polite to say "no" if he can possibly say "yes," even when he does not mean it; while the common people all over the world, as between metaphysics ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... not unnatural reaction that diverted the scholars of the Renaissance from Aristotle to Plato. The medieval Church had been Aristotelian, and "antagonism to the Roman Church had, doubtless, much to do with the Platonic revival, which spread from Italy to Cambridge." But, curiously enough, the Plato whom Cambridge served was not Plato the Athenian dialectician, but Plato the poet and allegorist. It was, in fact, Philo, the Jew, rather than Plato, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... more passionate natures might. But he allows her, at the last, an intimation of immortality. From her unresponding beauty, she sees, her sculptor lover has caught a madness eventually sublimated to a Platonic vision which, partially forgetful of her as an individual, has made him and his works great. Without, in the common way, modeling her at all, he has snared the essence of her spirit and has set it—as such mortal things go—everlastingly ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... an order of ideas has been established, which all deep philosophy has demanded, even when it could not make good its claim. This postulate is fulfilled. 2ndly, The postulate is fulfilled without mysticism or Platonic reveries. Ideas, however indispensable to human needs, and even to the connection of our thoughts, which came to us from nobody knew whence, must for ever have been suspicious; and, as in the memorable instance cited from Hume, must have been ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... reference to this distinction in the present writer's essay on The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge provoked at the instance of one critic the allegation that it is not borne out by a critical study of the Platonic texts. That is a matter of little moment and one upon which the writer cannot claim to pronounce. The important point is that in one way or another Plato undoubtedly distinguished between and indeed contrasted the ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... it proceeded became more animated, owing particularly to my accusing him of viewing all politics from a Hungarian point of view, which he did not deny, though he maintained that the dispute was a mere platonic one, as the Entente peace terms appeared to be such that Austria would be left with much less than Hungary. I was also first to state the terms under which we could make peace; then only would it be seen whether extreme pressure brought ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... sketch, as in some silhouette, bring back the antique life, and link the present with the past—a hint, perhaps, for reticence in our descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies of the court had spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising to the height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, when one of them exclaimed, 'The day has broken!' 'He pointed to the light which was beginning to enter by the fissures of the windows. Whereupon we flung the casements ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... library. His whole time was not, however, devoted to study; for he formed an acquaintance with Mrs Spencer Smith, the lady of the gentleman of that name, who had been our resident minister at Constantinople: he affected a passion for her; but it was only Platonic. She, however, beguiled him of his valuable yellow diamond ring. She is the Florence of Childe Harold, and merited the poetical embalmment, or rather the amber immortalisation, she possesses there—being herself a heroine. There was no exaggeration in saying ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... would find that Unitarianism was really the religion of all: and I observe a bill is now depending in parliament for the relief of Anti-Trinitarians. It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one: to divide mankind by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I understand it,' replied Flaxman. 'Decidedly not!' he added with energy, remembering that very platonic farewell. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a different chapter of experience altogether. Perhaps old Hardwick was right. I still have much to learn, thank God. Veronique was personal; Yae is symbolic. She is my model, just like a painter's model, only more platonic. She is the East to me; for I cannot understand the East pure and undiluted. She is a country-woman of mine on her father's side, and therefore easier to understand. Impersonality and fatalism, the Eastern Proteus, in the grip of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... lady, the front elevation of whose name is Stella, takes pen in hand and gives the Icon. a red-hot "roast" for having intimated that Platonic Love, so-called, is a pretty good thing for respectable women to let alone. Judged by the amount of caloric she generates, Stella must be a star of the first magnitude, or even an entire constellation. She "believes in the pure, passionless ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the very point. The facts always smash youth's logic, and they usually smash youth's heart, too. It's like platonic friendships and . . . and all such things; they are all right in theory, but they won't work in practice. I used to believe in such things once. That is why I am here in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... great obligations to Plato,' said Cadurcis. 'I remember, when I was in London, I always professed myself his disciple, and it is astonishing what results I experienced. Platonic love ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... adoring eyes; 190 Marks her white neck beneath the gauze's fold, Her ivory shoulders, and her locks of gold; Drinks with mute ecstacy the transient glow, Which warms and tints her bosom's rising snow. With holy kisses wanders o'er her charms, And clasps the Beauty in Platonic arms; Or if the dewy hands of Sleep, unbid, O'er her blue eye-balls close the lovely lid, Watches each nascent smile, and fleeting grace, That plays in day-dreams o'er her blushing face; 200 Counts the fine mazes of the curls, that break Round her fair ear, and shade her damask cheek; ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... for the 'Anti-Duehring' has been long forgotten. Not only is Duehring a thing of the past for the Social Democracy, but the whole throng of academic and platonic Socialists have been frightened away by the anti-Socialist legislation, which at least had the one good effect to show where the reliable supports of our movement are ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... de), only daughter of M. and Mme. Felix Grandet; born at Saumur in 1796. Strictly reared by a mother gentle and devout, and by a father hard and avaricious. The single bright ray across her life was an absolutely platonic love for her cousin Charles Grandet. But, once away from her, this young man was forgetful of her; and, on his return from the Indies in 1827, a rich man, he married the young daughter of a nobleman. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... extinguished with youth, but lingers hopeless of satisfaction through the incongruous years of middle age. There is never a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternally searches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle of his embrace—the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the only immortality conceivable ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... demoniac miracles and some lack of local knowledge, that it is not the work of a Palestinian Jew. Opening with a reference to the Logos, it strikes the key of Alexandrian philosophy. It is, indeed, rather theological than historical, so that it has been not inaptly compared to the Platonic, in contrast to the Xenophontic, account of Socrates, the theology seems like that of a post-evangelical era. Martineau's conclusion is that "the only Gospel which is composed and not merely compiled and edited, and for which, therefore, a single writer is responsible, has its birthday ...
— The Religious Situation • Goldwin Smith
... that I see the source of this music. We, that were learning German some thirty years ago, must remember the noise made at that time about Mendelssohn, the Platonic philosopher. And why? Was there any thing particular in 'Der Phaedon,' on the immortality of the soul? Not at all; it left us quite as mortal as it found us; and it has long since been found mortal itself. Its venerable remains are ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... and admitted nothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or insisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, of witchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonic school, of more ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Seventh Book 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 in ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... 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 of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... a great deal to the opera, and made acquaintance with a small number of charming people who admired the things that he admired. He joined a dining-club of which the motto was, The Whole, The Good, and The Beautiful. He formed a platonic friendship with a lady some years older than himself, who lived in Kensington Square; and nearly every afternoon he drank tea with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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 in Syria. But ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... the idea of this boy whom already she half loved asking her to be his friend, his sister! Oh, it was childishly funny. How her father would chuckle if he knew that she who had dismissed so many suitors with platonic friendliness and sisterly solicitude was now being offered that same platonic friendliness and brotherly love. It was too much for ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... 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 ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... M. Pierre Leroux—who says so many excellent things, but who is too fond, in my opinion, of his Platonic formulas—assures us that the evils of humanity are due to our IGNORANCE OF LIFE, M. Pierre Leroux utters an entite; for it is evident that if we are evil it is because we do not know how to live; but the knowledge of this fact is of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... breath away. He was also rather audacious, gritting his teeth in the face of the German peril, and I got to like him so much I secretly decided we'd always be good friends, old-fashioned, above-board, Platonic good friends. But the trouble with Platonic love is that it's always turning out too nice to be Platonic, or too Platonic to be nice. So I had to look straight at the bosom of that awful yellow-plaid English mackintosh and tell Dinky-Dunk the truth. And Dinky-Dunk ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... personal life he is presenting; a life entirely away from discussion, from all sense of problem; they are not problematic at all, his pictures; they have lyrical serenity as a basis, chiefly. Often you have the sensation of looking through a Renaissance window upon a Greek world—a world of Platonic verities in calm relation with each other. It is essentially an art created from the principle of the harmonic law in nature, things in juxtaposition, cooperating with the sole idea of a poetic existence. The titles cover the subjects, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... 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 ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... been 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
... answer that Christianity itself has very much suffered by being blended up with Gentile philosophy. The Platonic system, first taken into religion, was thought to have given matter for some early heresies in the Church. When disputes began to arise, the Peripatetic forms were introduced by Scotus as best fitted for controversy. And ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... Burke a Platonic idealism which made him, like later thinkers of the school, regard existing difficulties with something akin to complacent benevolence. What interested him was the idea of the English State; and whatever, as he thought, deformed it, was not of the essence of its nature. He denied, that is to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... three maidens' (Story of Janshah). [484] We go much too far for an explanation of the legend; a high bred girl is so much like a swan [485] in many points that the idea readily suggests itself. And it is also aided by the old Egyptian (and Platonic) belief in pre-existence, and by the Rabbinic and Buddhistic doctrine of Ante-Natal sin, to say nothing of metempsychosis. (Josephus' Antiq., ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 the belly, which they thought devoured the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... and loved by a person of the other sex, who regularly belongs to a higher social class. And it should be noted that the love felt by the patient toward this person is a romantic, ecstatic, but entirely 'Platonic' affection." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hillside, or lies on a bed of rushes watching the moon rise over the sea,—it is all to prepare himself for a worthy part in the "big day" when Athens will confront some old or new enemy on the battlefield. A great deal of the conversation among the younger men is surely not about Platonic ideals, Demosthenes's last political speech, nor the best fighting cocks; it is about spears, shield-straps, camping ground, rations, ambuscades, or the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... never induce me to give up the valuable possession of an unspotted character, and a conscience void of offence. I offered him all the enjoyment he could reap from an unreserved intercourse of souls, abstracted from any sensual consideration. He eagerly embraced the platonic proposal, because he had sagacity enough to foresee the issue of such chimerical contracts, and knew me too well to think he could accomplish his purpose without seeming to acquiesce in my own terms, and cultivating my ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... pen; his colloquial fertility in philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue,—all these accomplishments were to those who knew him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely instructive, but provocative to the observant intelligence. Of all persons whom we have known, Mr. James Mill was the one who stood least ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... from proper 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, Latinize, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it to Dr. Fell. The Oriel niches, designed in the illustration, are of rather later date.) The streets were crowded with carts, dragging in from all the neighbouring quarries stones for the future homes of the fair humanities. Erasmus found in Oxford a kind of substitute for the Platonic Society of Florence. "He would hardly care much about going to Italy at all, except for the sake of having been there. When I listen to Colet, it seems to me like listening to Plato himself"; and he praises the judgment and learning of those Englishmen, Grocyn and ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... his care, and all his spare time was passed in their company; but his manner conveyed only 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 ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... blow. This gallant lover, this young Crichton, this unassuming but ardent lover, had simply taken up with her as soon as he had failed with her friend. Lady Laura had been most enthusiastic in her expressions of friendship. Such platonic regards might be all very well. It was for Mr. Kennedy to look to that. But, for herself, she felt that such expressions were hardly compatible with her ideas of having her lover all to herself. And then she again remembered ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Tschaikovski was Benedick—July 6, 1877, he being then within three years of forty. The curious details of the courtship are told by the composer himself in a letter to Frau von Meek, a wealthy idolatress of his genius, with whom he had one of those affairs called Platonic, and of whom more later. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Perhaps Tennyson {104} only praised the first Edition and I don't know where to lay my hands on that. I wonder he should have thought twice about it. Not but I think the Truth is told: only, a Truth every one knows! And told in a shape of Dialogue really something Platonic: but I doubt rather affectedly too. However, such as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my telling it could mend the matter!): and I cannot but think that the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... has written in 'Blix' just what such a woman's name would imply—a story of a frank, fearless girl comrade to all men who are true and honest because she is true and honest. How she saved the man she fishes and picnics with in a spirit of outdoor platonic friendship, makes a pleasant story, and a perfect contrast to the author's 'McTeague.' A splendid ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... was originally issued have been added five Tales, beginning with "The Platonic Bassoon," which are characteristic of the various moods, serious, gay, or pathetic, out of which grew the best work of the ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... "The Platonic philosophy is probably the grandest example of the unscientific use of the imagination extant; and it would be hard to estimate the amount of detriment to clear thinking effected, directly and indirectly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand, and by the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... a double love which shot its arrows of desire, and then lost them in the sky, where they faded out of sight in the impermeable ether. If you ask me why, young and ardent, I continued in the deluding dreams of Platonic love, I must own to you that I was not yet man enough to torture that woman, who was always in dread of some catastrophe to her children, always fearing some outburst of her husband's stormy temper, martyrized by him ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... hardly keeps your Protean vices pace. Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly To some new frisk of contrariety. You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run, 20 And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one. Your Venus once was a Platonic queen; Nothing of love beside the face was seen; But every inch of her you now uncase, And clap a vizard-mask upon the face. For sins like these, the zealous of the land, With little hair, and little or no band, Declare how circulating pestilences Watch, every ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, whom the Platonic philosophers placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... of the sufferings endured by Prometheus was on account of man, whom he had befriended; and, by befriending, had defeated the malignity of Jove. According to some, man was even created by Prometheus: but no accounts, until lying Platonic philophers arose, in far later times, represented man as created ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... quantum of insight, only modified by my 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, could Brutus say that he found no personal ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... dialogues which are translated in the second appendix are not mentioned by Aristotle, or by any early authority, and have no claim to be ascribed to Plato. They are examples of Platonic dialogues to be assigned probably to the second or third generation after Plato, when his writings were well known at Athens and Alexandria. They exhibit considerable originality, and are remarkable for containing several thoughts of the sort which we suppose to be modern rather than ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... How's that? On the contrary, I want to live and rescue her. I could serve or die for that child with pleasure—without even the reward of a smile! There must be something peculiar here. Is it—can it be Platonic love? Of course that must be it. Yes, I've often heard and read of that sort of love before. I know it now, and—and—I ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... refused to call a meeting of our Soviet, betrayed us.... The masses of the soldiers want the Constituent Assembly to be held exactly when it was called for, and those who dare to postpone it will be cursed-and not only platonic curses either, for the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... holding her letter in his hand. "She can't surely think that I am going to make a shop-girl my wife, and if she doesn't hope for that, why has she consented to correspond with me, to receive the books I send her, and to meet me so frequently? Or does she believe that this is purely a platonic feeling between us—a mere friendship such as one man has for another? I don't think so. Platonic love is purely a delusion of the male mind. Women are colder than we are, but instinctively they know the character of our ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... way. I was sick of lovers, and some of the last had been so unpleasant, not to say rude, when I threw them over, that I thought I would take a vacation. So when I met Payson, I said, 'What do you say to a Platonic friendship?' It sounds harmless, you know, Ruth, and he, not knowing me at all, assented. If he had been a man who knew of my checkered career, he would have refused, suspecting, of course, that I was going to ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Speaking one day of his thinness he remarked that she used to call him mon cher cadavre. Miss Stirling was much about Chopin. I may mention by the way that Mrs. Lyschinski told me that Miss Stirling was much older than Chopin, and her love for him, although passionate, purely Platonic. Princess Czartoryska arrived some time after Chopin, and accompanied him, my informant says, wherever he went. But, as we see from one of his letters, her stay in Scotland was short. The composer was always on the move. Indeed, Dr. Lyschinski's was hardly more ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... was introduced, in spite of the vigorous opposition of such austere conservatives as Cato. Panaetius (185-112), the Stoic from Rhodes, had a cordial reception at Rome. The Stoic teaching was adapted to the Roman mind. The Platonic philosophy was brought in by Carneades. This was frequently more acceptable to orators and statesmen. Along with the Stoic, the Epicurean school found adherents. Cato—who, although a historian and an orator, was, in theory and practice, a rigid man, with the simple ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... with Mary Story is often spoken of as the one love-affair in the life of Sir Isaac Newton. It was all prosily Platonic on his part, but as Mary lived out her life at Grantham, and Sir Isaac Newton used to go there occasionally, and when he did, always called upon her, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... know. He invented Platonic love, didn't he? So that might save him." She looked at him with her great grey eyes—he couldn't tell whether she was quizzing ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... had been so modest! Should he know how to appear, how to conduct himself properly? He asked this of Papillon. Our poet was proud, he feared ridicule, and would not consent to play an inferior role anywhere; and then his success just then was entirely platonic. He was still very poor and lived in the Faubourg St.-Jacques. Massif ought to pay him in a few days five hundred francs for the second edition of his book; but what is a handful ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... suppose that either the one or the other was the object of more than a few well-authenticated sonnets would be hazardous. Nothing is more clear than that Michael Angelo worshipped Beauty in the Platonic spirit, passing beyond its personal and specific manifestations to the universal and impersonal. This thought is repeated over and over again in his poetry; and if we bear in mind that he habitually regarded the loveliness of man or woman as a sign and symbol of eternal and immutable beauty, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... "that it is unanimously maintained that devils do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are, ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded." Origen, in his Platonic speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... One of the Platonic illustrations, often brought up, is that of the happy oyster. [Footnote: Philebus, 22. "Is such a life eligible?" asks Socrates. Later (40), he agrees that "a man must be admitted to have real pleasure who is pleased with ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... "politeuma" (Phil. iii. v. 20), that Eternal Commonwealth which awaits perfected Spirits above, when, through infinite grace, they are finally admitted into a "CITY which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. xi. 10.) (The dim approximations of Platonic philosophy to certain discoveries in Divine Revelation, have rightly challenged the attention of theological enquirers. The above quotation from St. Paul suggests a reference to one of these, which occurs towards the termination of Plato's ninth book of "The Republic." He is uttering ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... platonic kiss upon the brow, not a brotherly kiss upon the cheek, but a kiss full upon the parted lips, a kiss of worship and amazement, such as that with which Adam in all probability ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the case, the history of the way in which philosophy has dealt with it is curious. The ruling tradition in philosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that fixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. Reality must be one and unalterable. Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with this fixed nature of truth, so ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... was alone, he took up the letter which Susannah had brought and looked at it curiously. His eyes had caught the address. He was not sure that he would have put it in the bag even if it had been in time, and now it was clearly his duty to consider. His was a mind in which there was no place for platonic friendship, and Susannah was obviously a most desirable piece of property to the struggling Church. The Church had provided the paper for this letter, must needs provide the stamp; he was officially responsible to the Church. The elder had been an honest man according to the average ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... cocoanut. The cause of the lost empire and the identity of its site with the Dolphin's Ridge and the shallows noted by H.M.S. Challenger, have been ably pleaded in Atlantis, &c., by Ignatius Donnelly (London, Sampson Low, 1882).] find in these sons of Vulcan, the debris of Platonic Atlantis, a drowned continent, a 'Kingdom of Nowhere,' which some cataclysm whelmed beneath the waters, leaving, for all evidence, three shattered groups of outcrops, like the Channel Islands, fragments of a lost empire, the 'bones of a wasted body.' Geologists, noting that volcanoes ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... that the punishment of such treachery as Caesar's by assassination was one of the first of duties. How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic philosopher!] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... why should the blamer gar thee blaming bow? * How be consoled for thee that art so tender bough? Bright being! on my vitals cost thou prey, and drive * My heart before platonic passion's[FN490] force to bow. Thy Turk like[FN491] glances havoc deal in core of me, * As furbished sword thin ground at curve could never show: Thou weigh's" me down with weight of care, while I have not * Strength e'en to bear my shift, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... me at first sight, and his wooing had all the passionate ardor of a Southern nature; for he was born in the Sunny South, his father being a wealthy French planter. After my betrothed's somewhat Platonic love, his passionate worship was acceptable, and, as the hour of my pastoral life at Cavendish drew near, my fancy turned, irresistibly, towards the free, gay life Le Grande offered me. We had grown so intimate I confessed to him ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... destroyed these collections. For her part, Lady Mary returned letters that she had received from Lord Hervey, but only those that belonged to the last fourteen years of an acquaintance that had endured twice so long. These are for the greater number platonic in character, although there are a few phrases of a freer kind. Croker, who edited Lord Hervey's Memoirs, mentions that Hervey, answering one of her letters in 1737, in which she had complained that she was too old to inspire ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... 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 the ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... I have seen several instances where the women have preferred personal beauty to interest; though, I must own, that even in these cases, they seem scarcely susceptible of those delicate sentiments that are the result of mutual affection; and, I believe, that there is less Platonic love in Otaheite than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... in 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... sensible, and affectionate. If our marriage, and all the sequel to it, could have been conducted by epistles, nothing could have been more satisfactory. But I felt a little doubtful about the termination of this Platonic friendship, with its half-betrothal. It did not appear to me that Olivia's image was fading in the slightest degree; no, though I knew her to be married, though I was ignorant where she was, though there was not the faintest hope within me that she ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fact to bear in mind is that in man the sex instinct bears a more sensual, a more physical, a coarser and grosser character, if you have no objection to these adjectives, than it does in woman. In women it is finer, more spiritual, more platonic, to use this stereotyped and incorrect term. In men the sex manifestations are more centralized, more local, more concentrated in the sex organs; in women they are more diffused throughout the body. In a boy of fifteen the libido sexualis may be fully developed, he may have powerful erections and ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... says that it was their expedient to make love a "science and an art. Rules were devised, and passion was to be bound with a rigid etiquette like that of chivalry or social intercourse. It was to be mainly an affair of sentiment and honor, not wholly Platonic to be sure, but thoroughly desensualized. Four stages were marked off in the lover's progress: first, he adored for a season without venturing to confess it; secondly, he adored as a mere suppliant; thirdly, he adored as one who knew that ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell fortunes, which protected her against those trials for magic which were so frequently instituted against gypsy women. And then, Gringoire held the position of her brother, if not of her husband. After all, the philosopher endured this sort of platonic marriage very patiently. It meant a shelter and bread at least. Every morning, he set out from the lair of the thieves, generally with the gypsy; he helped her make her collections of targes* and little blanks** in the squares; each evening he returned to the same roof with her, allowed her to bolt ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... resumed 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 himself, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... supposed to be so profitable to the community, exhausted all their ingenuity, both before the days of Constantine the Great and afterward, to arrest the progress of Christianity. In the beginning of this century Hierocles, the great ornament of the Platonic school, composed two books against the Christians, in which he had the audacity to compare our Saviour with Apollonius Tyanaeus, and for which he was chastised by Eusebius in a tract written expressly against him. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to Vittoria Colonna and Cavalieri, we find something inexpressibly pathetic in this pure and fervent worship of beauty, when the artist with a soul still young had reached the limit of the years of man. Here and there we trace in them an echo of his youth. The Platonic dialogues he heard while yet a young man at the suppers of Lorenzo, reappear converted to the very substance of his thought and style. At the same time Savonarola resumes ascendency over his mind; and when he turns to Florence, it is of Dante that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and biblical criticism. The significance of the doctrine for intellectual history. Character of the opposition to the evolutionary theory. Popular confusion of 'Darwinism' with 'evolution.' Revolutionary effects of the new point of view. Does away with conception of fixed species (Platonic ideas) that had previously dominated speculation. The genetic method adopted in all the organic sciences, including the newer social sciences. Problem of adjusting history to the discoveries of the past 50 years. Bearing of evolution on the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... why I wrote to you, and you must have wondered why I forgave you for the wrong you did me. I guessed that our friendship when I was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, I found an excuse for you. When my hatred was bitterest, I knew somehow, at the back of my mind—for I only allowed myself to think of it occasionally—that you acted from—there ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... of his political agitations. His mother was a French woman of Huguenot extraction who died of cancer before the patient reached his teens but to whom he was greatly attached. He has a sister two years older than himself, given to hysteric attacks, for whom his love is "Platonic," to use his own term. Although of more than normal intellectual vigor, judging by his success in school work, he probably always had a psychotic tendency. At seven or eight he saw a vision of God in the clouds; at puberty he masturbated considerably and used to stand before the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... notable for his virtues as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was essentially a handsome man. The person who initiated the discussion by observing that 'Mr. Blank was unquestionably a plain man' expected from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any remark whatever) nothing beyond a Platonic 'That I do most firmly believe.' He was not a little astonished when the great book-collector began an elaborate and exhaustive defense of the gentleman whose claims to beauty had been questioned. At first it was dialogue, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... When Justinian in 529 closed the university of Athens, the last seat of paganism in the Roman empire, the last seven teachers of Neoplatonism emigrated to Persia. But they soon found out that neither Chosroes nor his state corresponded to the Platonic ideal, and Chosroes, in his treaty with Justinian, stipulated that they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... altogether absorbed in them. But our horses, Naughty Boy and Aurora, which arrived here two days ago with the trainer Webb and Jack Goose, the jockey, are on the list for Thursday; therefore my aunt's attendance at the Sunday races was merely a platonic affair. The goings on here are past all description. The stables have been converted into a kind of fortress. My aunt fancies the jockeys of other racing studkeepers shake in their shoes at the very mention of ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that God was knowable, but it substituted something else for this spiritual scepticism. Mysticism started with the conviction that God was unknowable by reason, but it held that God was nevertheless realisable in the human experience. Accepting and adopting various Neo-Platonic theories of emanation, elaborating thence an intricate angelology, the mystics threw a bridge over the gulf between God and man. Philo's Logos, the Personified Wisdom of the Palestinian Midrash, ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... degree the pleasure which I felt in her society. Though for upwards of twelve months, which was ever since we had become first acquainted, my attentions had been very marked, yet they had not attracted any particular notice. I thought, alas! and I professed what I thought, that I felt the most pure platonic affection for this lady, and that I was blessed with her friendship in return. My wife had watched the progress of this attachment with anxiety and pain; she mentioned her fears, and expostulated in becoming terms against the imprudence of my conduct, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Hinduism" has been a real refreshment to me, in this investigation of the Indian consciousness of God in the world. The mastery of the Socratic-Platonic dialogue, the delicacy and freedom of the investigation, and the deep Christian and human spirit of this man, have attracted me more than all other new English books, and even filled me with astonishment. Muir, that good man, sent it me through Williams and Norgate, and I have not only thanked ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... smiled at him from a latticed window. If she dropped for him her glove or handkerchief, he was in the seventh heaven. As his intents were not honorable nor his purpose marriage, it made no difference whether the lady was married or single, young or old. Whether the love remained upon a Platonic and purely poetic basis depended, of course, entirely upon the lady and her watchful relatives. If the family were poor and the lover rich, these things might have a bearing. We hear of alliances in those days, not dishonorable, where the husband was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally developed in time into a threefold division, pure thought, perception, and desire; or even more nearly approaching the Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into reason, passion, and desire. But the later developments were largely influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... running after witches to hear them recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or innocence;[8]—The gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding on the armour of persecution, and rousing itself from a Platonic reverie on the Divine Life, to assume the hood and cloak of a familiar of the Inquisition;[9]—and the patient and enquiring Boyle, putting aside for a while his searches for the grand Magisterium, and listening, as if spell-bound, with gratified attention to stories of witches ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... I dare say it was Platonic. I believe these kind of things generally are Platonic. And as for Lady Laura;—heavens and earth!—I suppose it must have been Platonic. What did ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Plato to those of Cicero, and during its whole course there is traceable a distinct continuity of thought which justifies its examination as a real intellectual unit. On the other hand, this continuity of thought is by no means an identity. The Platonic doctrine was so far modified in the hands of successive scholarchs that the Academy has been divided into either two, three or five main sections (Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 220). Finally,in the days of Philo, Antiochus and Cicero, the metaphysical dogmatism of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the works of that "Prince of modern philosophers," Lord Bacon. In his great mind were united the characteristics of the two ancient, but nevertheless universal, schools of philosophy, the Aristotelic and the Platonic. It is, I believe, the only instance known of such a difficult combination. His "Essays," his "Advancement of Learning," his "Wisdom of the Ancients," you might understand and profit by, even now. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... (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
... "species" and "individual" have undergone in the last fifty years. They do not seem capable of the suspicion that the boundaries of species have vanished, and that individuality now carries with it the quality of the unique! To them individuals are still defective copies of a Platonic ideal of the species, and the purpose of breeding no more than an approximation to that perfection. Individuality is indeed a negligible difference to them, an impertinence, and the whole flow of modern biological ideas has washed over ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... between a man and a woman should be called by another name. It cannot be wholly Platonic (3); it need not be wholly Dantesque. Yet women generally strive to make it the one; and men often try to make it the ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... once in Miss O'Neill's romantic heart—and yet, had she but known, here was a romance such as her soul loved above all things—the son of the adored dead mistress discovered in extremis, and saved, by the devout platonic lover, the life-long lover, and revealed to him by the utterance of the pre-natally learnt words of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... view, you yourself must be sensible would be ridiculous. Were I to extend it farther, it would still conclude more to your disadvantage, but I think enough is said to convince any impartial person, that if the one, with the smallest appearance of justice, was denied an admission into the Platonic commonwealth, the other would have been kick'd out of it with shame and disgrace; yet, you have very pleasantly contrived to find a place there for yourself, in Homer's room. You have adopted and inserted in your Clarissa the four following verses, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... of December almost everybody has a party, either to dine or sup. The company, almost entirely consisting of young people, wait together till twelve o'clock strikes, at which time every one begins to move, and they all fall to work. At what? why, kissing. Each male is successively locked in pure Platonic embrace with each female; and after this grand ceremony, which, of course, creates infinite fun, they separate and go home. This matter is not at all confined to these, but wherever man meets woman it ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general contributed to my final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; even as according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic philosophers (libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical Greece. The more highly developed, self-conscious Hellenic genius, shrinking from promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new ideal in Platonic love. But below the surface raged the unbridled natural force, and in perfect harmony with the Greek spirit—it was not hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. Wrapped in the obscurity of the Mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... 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
... the doctrine of the Trinity, the Unitarians find in the speculations of those Christianized philosophers of the second century, whose minds were strongly tinctured with the Platonic philosophy, combined with the emanation system, as taught at Alexandria, and held by Philo. From this time they trace the gradual formation of the doctrine through successive ages down to Athanasius ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... 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 ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... to illustrate the blameless text with an equally faithful record of Shelby's actions might salt the narrative. He had a lawyer's perception of the values of words as words, and through extended practice with Mrs. Hilliard excelled in that deft juggling of pregnant trifles without which Platonic friendships must die of inanition. He now thanked the lady for her successful coup at the club without specifically naming it—to hint at prearrangement were too fatuous; and Mrs. Hilliard admired his tact. Parenthetically she reflected ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... 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 ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... idea," said the little man as they emerged into the narrow street. "Now ideas may be divided variously into classes, as, for instance, ideas which are good, bad, or indifferent. Or you may contrast the idea of Plato with ideas anything but platonic—take it as you please. Then there is my idea, which is in itself, good, interesting, and worthy of the embalming process; and there is your idea, which I am human enough to consider altogether bad, worthless, and frivolous, for the plain and substantial reason that it is not mine. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... time, or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would be more likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing. In all attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws, more than shorter ones. But, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of Greece." His contribution to the wealth of the world consists in the fact that he taught the joys of the intellect—the supreme satisfaction that comes through thinking. This is the pure Platonic philosophy: to find our gratifications in exalted thought and not in bodily indulgence. Plato's theory that five years should be given in early manhood to abstract thought, abstaining from all practical affairs, so as to acquire a love for learning, has ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... archaeological learning. It contains exact descriptions of all the rarities of ancient art, and of things Oriental which he had seen, and pages of transcripts from obscure Latin and Greek authors, descriptive of religious ceremonies; varied with Platonic philosophy, Decameronian obscenities, in laboured pseudo-Florentine style, and Dantesque visions, all held together by the confused narrative of an allegorical journey performed by the author. It is profusely ornamented with ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... regret that our relations were not always strictly platonic. That is the highest practical ideal of the age—modern woman ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... agree," Mrs. Foster answered. "Jimmy's too young and hasn't much beside his pay. His admiration's respectfully platonic, but it's largely on his account I thought of asking her to remain. I'm grateful to her for amusing the poor fellow, because, as he can't get about with the others, he'd have been left a good deal to himself if she hadn't taken him up. She's excellent company when she exerts herself, ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... and a distinguishable quality. It is a thing by itself, like the Platonic idea of Beauty.[1] It is sin stripped of its accompaniments,—the restlessness, the dissatisfaction, and the unhappiness which it produces,—and perceived in its pure odiousness and ill-desert. And when thus seen, it does not permit ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... evolution of thought as at the same time the evolution of Being, the Idea being the only thing that could be said to be truly real. In order to understand this, we must remember that the historical key to Hegel's Idea was really the Neo-Platonic or Alexandrian Logos. But of this Logos we ignorant undergraduates, sitting at the feet of Prof. Weisse, knew absolutely nothing, and even if the Idea was sometimes placed before us as the Absolute, the Infinite, or the Divine, it was to us, at least to most of us, myself included, vox ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... the worst, of their class. The plot of "The English Traveller" is specially good; and in reading few works of fiction do we receive a greater shock of surprise than in Geraldine's discovery of the infidelity of Wincott's wife, whom he loves with a Platonic devotion. It is as unanticipated as the discovery, in Jonson's "Silent Woman," that Epicaene is no woman at all, while at the same time it has less the appearance of artifice, and is more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of Indians and Negroes."—Id. "To have a place among the Alexanders, the Caesars, the Louises, or the Charleses,—the scourges and butchers of their fellow-creatures."—Burgh cor." Which was the notion of the Platonic philosophers and the Jewish rabbies."—Id. "That they should relate to the whole body of virtuosoes."—Cobbeti cor." What thanks have ye? for sinners also love those that love them."—Bible cor." There are ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Rosa. What would she say, what would she feel, when she learnt that I had been drowned in the Channel? Would she experience a grief merely platonic, or had she indeed a profounder feeling towards me? Drowned! Who said drowned? There were the boats, if they could be launched, and, moreover, I could swim. I considered what I should do at the moment the ship foundered—for I still felt she would founder. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett |
