What is there to be said and thought must needs be: for it is therefore being, but nothing is not.. I bid you ponder that ...who believe that to be and not to be are the same an not the same; and the path by them all is backward-turning.

“For you will not find thinking without what is, in all that has been said. For there

neither is nor will be anything else besides what is, since Fate fettered it to be whole and changeless. Therefore it has been named all the names which mortals have laid down believing them to be true – coming to be and perishing, being and not being, changing place and altering in bright color. But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected...”

It never was nor will be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous. […] I shall not allow you to say from not being: for it is not to be said nor thought that it is not […] Thus it must either be completely or not at all.

“One cannot step twice into the same river, nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again gathers; it forms and dissolves, and

approaches and departs”

“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, hunger and satiety”, “The opinions of most people are like the playthings of infants”

"... there is a man called Socrates... who makes the worse argument the stronger."

“He went to Delphi at one time and ventured to ask the oracle [...] he asked if any man was wiser than I, and the Pythian replied that no one was wiser.”

“Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great

reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things--either death

is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say,

there is a change and migration of the soul from this  “He went to Delphi at one time and ventured to ask the oracle [...] he asked if any man was wiser than I, and the Pythian replied that no one was wiser.”

“For to fear death [...] is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.”

“Ought a man to do what he admits to be right, or ought he to betray the right?”

"Or is your wisdom such that you do not see that more than mother and father and all other ancestors the country is honorable and revered and holy and in greater esteem both among the gods and among humans who have intelligence, also she must be revered and more yielded to and humored when the country is angry than when the father is, and either persuade or do what she may order, and suffer whatever she directs be suffered, keeping quiet, and if beaten or imprisoned or brought to war to be wounded or killed, these are to be done, and justice is like this,and not yielding nor retreating nor leaving the post, not only in war and in court but everywhere one must do what the state and the country may order, or persuade her what is natural justice, but to be violent is neither holy to mother nor father, and even much less to one's country?"

“Well, I will not dispute with you; but please to tell me, Socrates, whether you are not acting out of regard to me and your other friends: are you not afraid that if you escape from prison we may get into trouble with the informers for having stolen you away, and lose either the whole or a great part of our property; or that even a worse evil may happen to us? Now, if you fear on our account, be at ease; for in order to save you, we ought surely to run this, or even a greater risk; be persuaded, then, and do as I say.”

“…should we follow the opinion of the many and fear it, or that of the one, if there is one who has knowledge of these things and before whom we feel fear and shame more than before all the others?  If we do not follow his directions, we shall harm and corrupt that part of ourselves that is improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions.  Or is there nothing in this?”

Wouldn't you include thirst, hunger, the appetites, as a whole, and wishing and willing somewhere in the class we mentioned? Wouldn't you say that the soul of someone who has an appetite for a thing wants what he has an appetite for and takes to himself what it is his will to have, and that insofar as he wishes something to be given to him, his soul, since it desires this to come about, nods assent to it as if in answer to a question?

“Doesn’t that which forbids in such cases come into play- if it comes into play at all- as a result of rational calculation, while what drives and drags them to drink is a result of feelings and diseases?”

“The soul of someone who has an appetite for a thing wants what he has an appetite for and takes to himself what it is his will to have and, insofar as he wishes something to be given to him, his soul, since it desires this to come about, nods assent to it as if in answer to a question.”

“What about not willing, not wishing, and not having an appetite? Aren’t these among the very opposites-- cases in which the soul pushes and drives things away?”

Surely, it must be a kind of civil war between the three parts…, a rebellion by some part against the whole soul in order to rule it inappropriately…I suppose, and that the turmoil and straying of these parts are…in a word, the whole of vice.

Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.

“You know that, when we turn our eyes to things whose colors are no longer in the light of day but in the gloom of night, the eyes are dimmed and seem nearly blind, as if clear vision were no longer in them.”

...You have two kinds of thing, visible and intelligible… one subsection of the visual consists of images. And by images I mean, first shadows, then reflections, and everything of that sort. In the other subsection of the visual, put the originals of these images…

These figures that they make and draw, of which shadows and reflections in water are images, they now in turn use as images, in seeking to see those others themselves that one cannot see except by means of thought.

““For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

“The good must be something final and self-sufficient.”

[T]here are various views of what happiness is. What is required at the start is an unreasoned conviction about the facts, such as is produced by a good upbringing.

Every art and every inquiry and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

“Verbally there is a general agreement,for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness... but with regard to what happiness is, they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise.”

Contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.

It is plain then that nature is a cause, a cause that operates for a purpose.

-Since 'nature' has two senses, the form and the matter, we must investigate its objects as we would the essence of snubness. That is, such things are neither independent of matter nor can be defined in terms of matter only.

Nature belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake of something

The form indeed is ‘nature’ rather than the matter, for a thing is more properly said to be what is is when it has attained to fulfilment than when it exists potentially

“Causes are spoken of in an equal number of senses; for all causes are beginnings.”

"'Cause' means (1) that from which, as immanent material, a thing comes into being, e.g. the bronze is the cause of the statue and the silver of the saucer, and so are the classes which include these'"

“These, then, are practically all the senses in which causes are spoken of, and as they are spoken of in several senses it follows both that there are several causes of the same thing, and in no accidental sense.”

The knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life. Our aim is to grasp and understand, first its essential nature, and secondly its properties; of these some are taught to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are considered to attach to the animal owing to the presence within it of soul.

We must consider also whether soul is divisible or is without parts, and whether it is everywhere homogeneous or not; and if not homogeneous, whether its various forms are different specifically or generically: up to the present time those who have discussed and investigated soul seem to have confined themselves to the human soul. We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can be defined in a single unambiguous formula, as is the case with animal, or whether we must not give a separate formula for each of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the 'universal' animal-and so too every other 'common predicate'-being treated either as nothing at all or as a later product).

If, then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality of a natural organized body. That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter

But since it is also a body of such and such a kind[...] having life, the body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter, not what is attributed to it. Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized. Now the word actuality has two senses corresponding respectively to the possession of knowledge and the actual exercise of knowledge.[...] the soul is actuality in the first sense, viz. that of knowledge as possessed, for both sleeping and waking presuppose the existence of soul, and of these waking corresponds to actual knowing, sleeping to knowledge possessed but not employed [...]knowledge comes before its employment or exercise.

“The body cannot be soul; the body is the subject or matter, not what is attributed to it. Hence the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized.”

They say a wise man is free of passions because he is not disposed to them.

“The [X's] cling to the common conceptions and define the good as follows: “good is benefit or what is not other than benefit.” By benefit they mean virtue and virtuous action, and by not other than benefit they mean the virtuous man and a friend.”

In the third and final sense good is said to be that which is such as a benefit, this description encompassing the virtues, virtuous actions, friend, virtuous men, and gods and excellent daimons…..  and there were some who said that the good is that which is worth choosing or its own sake; and some who used this definition: “good is that which contributes to happiness,” and others who said that it is “that which fulfills happiness.”

All natural processes, such as life and death follow an unbreakable law of nature. Man must therefore learn to accept his destiny.

I suppose, accordingly, that all the things which I see are false; I believe that none of those objects which my fallacious memory represents ever existed; I suppose that I possess no senses; I believe that body, figure, extension, motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind.

“Nevertheless, the belief that there is a God who is all powerful, and who created me, such as I am, has, for a long time, obtained steady possession of my mind. How, then, do I know that he has not arranged that there should be neither earth, nor sky, nor any extended thing, nor figure, nor magnitude, nor place, providing at the same time, however, for [the rise in me of the perceptions of all these objects, and] the persuasion that these do not exist otherwise than as I perceive them?”

- All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes misled us; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

This alone is inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be.  

“We have no innate ideas or conceptions about the world we brought into before we have seen it. If we do have a conception or an idea that cannot be related to experienced facts, then it will be a false conception”.

“One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.”

“God is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, and therefore concerning his identity there can be no doubt... Secondly, Finite spirits having had each its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the relation to that time and place will always determine to each of them its identity, as long as it exists.”

“they who place human identity in consciousness only, and not in something else, must consider how they will make the infant Socrates the same man with Socrates after the resurrection”

[X] is not saying that reason plays no role in a person determining an action, but that reason by itself is not enough to move a person to action.  The motivation to act must come from passion.  A person’s will is an effect of pain or pleasure, and will be exerted when some form of pleasure or absence of pain is achieved by an action of the mind or body.  Essentially, whatever the person wants more will be the determining factor of their reason.

It is obvious, that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity... [we] comprehend whatever objects are connected with its original one by the relation of cause and effect... reasoning takes place to discover this relation... our actions receive a subsequent variation.

Hume

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. As this opinion may appear somewhat extraordinary, it may not be improper to confirm it by some other considerations.

Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will, and (reason) can never oppose passion in the direction of the will.

" As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived."

"In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now."

“For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality which is  

acknowledged to exist only in the mind.”

 “From what has been said it follows there is not any other Substance than Spirit, or that which perceives. But, for the fuller proof of this point, let it be considered the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, etc., i.e. the ideas perceived by sense. Now, for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction, for to have an idea is all one as to perceive...”