"Platonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Donne the more firmly I become convinced that, far from being primarily the poet of desire gratified and satiated, he is essentially the poet of frustrated love. He is often described by the historians of literature as the poet who finally broke down the tradition of Platonic love. I believe that, so far is this from being the case, he is the supreme example of a Platonic lover among the English poets. He was usually Platonic under protest, but at other times exultantly so. Whether he finally overcame the more consistent ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... followers had very fixed opinions as to what would befall man hereafter; but the sole point of belief on which they were determined—that the soul has nothing in common with the body, and survives it—was enough to give the Platonic philosophy that sublime aspiration by which it is distinguished. It is clear from the works of Plato, that many philosophical writers, his predecessors or contemporaries, professed materialism. These writers ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... those lofty and divine Platonic doctrines, that are familiar to but few of the elect and wholly unknown to all the uninitiate, such for instance as that which teaches us that Venus is not one goddess, but two, each being strong in her own type of love and ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... prepared work with the 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. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... "I had a sentry-box coat made, of rough grey cloth, with trousers and waist-coat to match. With a grey hat and a huge cravat of woolen material, I looked exactly like a first-year student." In the freedom of this rather unalluring garb she entered into relations Platonic, fraternal, or tempestuously passionate with perhaps the most distinguished series of friends and lovers that ever fluttered about one flame. There was Aurelien de Seze; Jules Sandeau, her first collaborator, who "reconciled her to life" and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is called.]; in short, they are to spend all their time and money in her service, who rewards them accordingly (for opportunity they want none) but the husband is not to have the impudence to suppose this any other than pure Platonic friendship. 'Tis true, they endeavour to give her a Cizisbei of their own chusing; but when the lady happens not to be of the same taste, as that often happens, she never fails to bring it about ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Hebrew and other Oriental languages were not taught at all; and in philosophy Aristotle held exclusive possession of the ground. His reforms applied particularly to these branches of learning: Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac were taught according to the best methods of the age; and the Platonic Philosophy was introduced. M'Crie, who always speaks with authority on such a subject, describes the reformed curriculum as the most liberal and enlightened plan of study in any University, whether at home ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... not, at all events, from a personal jealousy; for the illuminating conviction had come over her that Wallace could not possibly be one of Paula's conquests. A man still capable of cherishing as the most beautiful event of his life, that sentimental platonic friendship he had enjoyed with her mother, would be immune ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... despair. How's that? I don't want to shoot or drown myself. 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, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... been at some length to give a picture of Madame de Rambouillet's hotel because it really is the earliest modern house. There, where the society that frequented it was analyzing its soul in dialogue and long platonic discussion that would seem stark enough to us, the word which it invented for itself was urbanite—the coinage of one of ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... 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 ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... 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 ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... manifestation of the rough, the gross, the instinctive, and offer for meditation this saying of Michelet: "Cloth woven by a weaver is just as natural as that a spider weaves. All is in one Being, all is in the Idea and for the Idea, the latter being understood in the way Platonic substantialism has been interpreted...." ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... wondered 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
... Mabel have undeceived him had his ideas remained Platonic. Their irruption into the world of practical politics, into her own life, was, however, another pair of shoes. Since Barstein had brought Zionism to her consciousness, she had noted that distinguished Christians were quite ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the senate, with apparent show of utter ruin, 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, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... I kept 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 men. But present me to Miss Susan at once, my dear friend. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was the strongest and bravest of the Knights of the Round Table, and for him Elaine, "the fair maid of Astolat," conceived a hopeless passion. "Her love was platonic and pure as that of a child, but it was masterful in its strength." Having learned that Lancelot was pledged to celibacy, she pined away and died. But before her death she called her brother, and having dictated a letter which he was to write, she ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... 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 anything or anyhow," but asks if it is not true that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... professed to have fallen in love with 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 my repugnance to the mild joys awaiting me. Here I made ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... general benevolence, more alive to the sentiments that civilize life, than the square elbowed family drudge; but, wanting a due proportion of reflection and self-government, they only inspire love; and are the mistresses of their husbands, whilst they have any hold on their affections; and the platonic friends of his male acquaintance. These are the fair defects in nature; the women who appear to be created not to enjoy the fellowship of man, but to save him from sinking into absolute brutality, by rubbing off the rough angles of his character; and by playful dalliance to give some ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... table, saying he asked pardon." To this 'riding surveyor' we owe also an indication that Fielding found room in the narrow confines of a cabin for his Plato; for the rude insolence of that functionary recalls to his mind the Platonic theory of the divine original of rulers, and he proceeds to quote a long passage from the Laws, which even his ready scholarship could scarce have had ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... of knights consisted of sincere worshippers of female beauty, but their worship was by no means Platonic; it pursued quite material ends. And these material ends were pursued by those also with whom Christian mysticism, coupled with natural sensuousness, made a unique combination. Even that harlequin among the worshippers ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... contemplated such a man as the venerable Charlemont, whose nobility was to the people like a fort over a valley, elevated above them solely for their defence; who introduced the polish of the courtier into the camp of the freeman, and served his country with all that pure Platonic devotion which a true knight in the time of chivalry proffered to his mistress; when I listened to the eloquence of Grattan, the very music of freedom, her first fresh matin song, after a long night of slavery, degradation, and sorrow; when I saw the bright ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... promises made him were carried out; meanwhile he went 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. It was notorious that any fool ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... reading her daughter's soul, was therefore right. Modeste loved; she loved with that rare platonic love, so little understood, the first illusion of a young girl, the most delicate of all sentiments, a very dainty of the heart. She drank deep draughts from the chalice of the unknown, the vague, the visionary. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... more intimate relation of friendship or love. The "Ewig Weibliche" appears constantly in his music and was always in his life. He formed many romantic attachments which may not always have been Platonic, but they were always pure. Beethoven had as chivalrous a regard for women as had any ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... diversion to the company. Pamela chid her brother Joseph for the concern which he exprest at discovering a new sister. She said, if he loved Fanny as he ought, with a pure affection, he had no reason to lament being related to her.—Upon which Adams began to discourse on Platonic love; whence he made a quick transition to the joys in the next world, and concluded with strongly asserting that there was no such thing as pleasure in this. At which Pamela and her husband smiled ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... greatest value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... intelligent affection, and whenever she became tired of her infatuation she could go none the worse for it. For I was decided on that point although I knew how hard it would be. I remembered the usual termination of Platonic liaisons, and thought how disgusted I had been whenever I heard of one. I knew I was undertaking a great deal for so unscrupulous a man as I was, and I dreamed the future, but never for one moment ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... confess, they 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 a single ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no!! For us Life is something merely tiresome, dull,—a kind of heavy burden. In carrying it we sigh with weariness and complain of its weight. Do we really love Life! The Love of Life! The very words sound strange to our ears! We love only our dreams of the future—and this love is Platonic, with no hope ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... and maintain a status quo of a pacific neutrality—a sort of Platonic peace. [Laughs.] But I am going into details ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... has, in common with the poems of the preceding years, the one quality of a largely religious and, in a certain sense, Christian spirit, and in this respect it falls naturally into the general series of its author's works. The assertion of Platonic ideas suggests, however, a mood of spiritual thought for which the reference in 'Pauline' has been our only, and a scarcely sufficient preparation; nor could the most definite theism to be extracted from ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... there have found the machines which are proper for their work, and those more certain in their effect than it may be the New Testament is in the rules sufficient for salvation. The perusing of one chapter in the prophecy of Daniel, and accommodating what there they find with the principles of Platonic philosophy as it is now Christianised, would have made the ministry of angels as strong an engine for the working up heroic poetry in our religion as that of the ancients has been to raise theirs by all the fables of their gods, which were only received for truths ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... it out of my mouth," said Bones. "It sounds inexplicable that I can be interested in a platonic, fatherly kind of way in the future of a lovely ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... consider the divine nature under the threefold modification—of the first cause, the reason, or Logos, and the soul or spirit of the universe. His poetical imagination sometimes fixed and animated these metaphysical abstractions; the three archical on original principles were represented in the Platonic system as three Gods, united with each other by a mysterious and ineffable generation; and the Logos was particularly considered under the more accessible character of the Son of an Eternal Father, and the Creator and Governor of the world. Such appear ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... others contended that he was an Evil Power at open war with the righteous Sovereign of the universe. The Gnostics also differed in their views respecting matter. Those of them who were Egyptians, and who had been addicted to the study of the Platonic philosophy, held matter to be inert until impregnated with life; but the Syrians, who borrowed much from the Oriental theology, taught that it was eternally subject to a Lord, or Ruler, who had been perpetually at variance with the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... these three days showed him that if Capadose was an abundant he was not a malignant liar and that his fine faculty exercised itself mainly on subjects of small direct importance. 'He is the liar platonic,' he said to himself; 'he is disinterested, he doesn't operate with a hope of gain or with a desire to injure. It is art for art and he is prompted by the love of beauty. He has an inner vision of what might have been, of what ought to be, and he helps on the good cause ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Liddell and Scott and Davies and Vaughan. A 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 ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... criticism, Jonathan. What have the Socialists of twentieth century America to do with Plato? His utopian ideal is not their ideal; they are neither aiming at community of goods nor at community of wives. And when we put aside Plato and the Platonic communities, the first fact to challenge attention is that the communities which established laws relating to sex relations which were opposed to the monogamic family, whether promiscuity, so-called free love; plural marriage, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... admired Lucien in the Rue du Minage, and pulled him to pieces everywhere else. Nais had gradually given him les petites entrees, in the language of the court, for the lady no longer mistrusted her elderly admirer; but Chatelet had taken too much for granted—love was still in the Platonic stage, to the great ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... incognoscibility of the Deity is the same in each case. However, Philo was too thorough an Israelite and too much the child of his time to be content with this agnostic position. With the help of the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, he constructed an apprehensible, if not comprehensible, quasi-deity out of the Logos; while other more or less personified divine powers, or attributes, bridged over the interval between God and man; between the sacred existence, too pure to be ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence, 295 And all the strength and plumage of thy youth, Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out From things well-matched or ill, and words for things, 300 The self-created sustenance of a mind Debarred from Nature's living images, Compelled to be a life unto herself, And unrelentingly possessed by thirst Of greatness, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... because he does not stand alone, but is the representative and exponent of a certain school of ascetic thought whose tendency is diametrically contrary to that pseudo-mysticism which we have dealt with elsewhere, and have ascribed to a confusion of neo-platonic and Christian principles. This counter-tendency misses the Catholic mean in other respects and owes its faultiness, as we shall see, to some very analogous fallacies. If in our chapter on "The True and the False Mysticism," it was needful to show that the principles ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... injustice lies in this Platonic manner of classifying human beings in terms of {105} limited capacities; in assigning to some the degraded status of the appetites, and to others a limited faculty of understanding, while arrogating to a few the full power and title of Reason. The resentment of this ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... In the Platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precede the fact. Every step of progress is a defection from that idea. The dogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. It aims to give us the point ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... lectures of Archer Butler of Dublin, is devoted to the Platonic philosophy. It is a criticism and an eulogium. No modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the crowning excellence of the Greek philosophy. The dialectics of Plato, his ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... which is the love of the body. We call it by its proper name of lust. There is another emotion, for which the rich tongue of the ancient Greeks had a word, to which we have nothing to correspond. Call it, if you will, Platonic love, and define it to be an exalted friendship. But understand that neither the one nor the other is love, in the true sense of the word, and that both ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... father's invitation to call 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 ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... said that GALEN expresses, in these passages, the Platonic dogma of an anima mundi. But they certainly agree with the sentiments of HIPPOCRATES; and whether he derived them from the former or the latter, matters not, as both of them have invested matter with certain qualities, which render it active, whether it be ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... Muslim philosophy had gradually been eliminating the Neo-Platonic, mystic element, and returning to pure Aristotelianism. In Averroes, who professed to be merely a commentator on Aristotle, this tendency reached its climax; and though he still regarded the pseudo-Aristotelian works as genuine, and did not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... wonder that she talked thus contemptibly of M. de Beaufort, whom she always taxed with impotency, for it is certain that his love was purely Platonic, as he never asked any favour of her, and seemed very uneasy with her for eating flesh on Fridays. She was so sweet upon me, and withal such a charming beauty, that, being naturally indisposed to let such opportunities slip, I was melted into tenderness for her, notwithstanding ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... 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 than a pied-a-terre for him: ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... love, and the absolute necessity which there is for two strings to one's bow, when one string may be in any way doubtful. Could it be possible that Mrs. Grantly had heard anything of that unfortunate Platonic friendship with ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... 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 Madame Goesler's ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Thomson and Gray—and that he anticipated Wordsworth also as a lover of animal life. Cowper's love of nature was the less effective than Wordsworth's only, surely, in that he had not had Wordsworth's advantage of living amid impressive scenery. His love of animal life was far less platonic than Wordsworth's. To his hares and his pigeons and all dumb creatures he was genuinely devoted. Perhaps it was because he had in him the blood of kings—for, curiously enough, it is no more difficult to trace the genealogical tree of both Cowper and Byron down ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... thou, O virgin-widow, left alone, Now thy beloved, heaven-ravish'd spouse is gone, Whose skilful sire in vain strove to apply Medicines, when thy balm was no remedy,— With greater than Platonic love, O wed His soul, though not his body, to thy bed: Let that make thee a mother; bring thou forth The ideas of his virtue, knowledge, worth; 100 Transcribe the original in new copies, give Hastings o' the better part: so shall he live In's nobler half; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to remain among those who worshipped the gods. There is the present Indian willingness to discover Christian and modern ideas in the Hindu Scriptures, especially in the original Vedas that the new [A]rya sect declare to be "the Scripture of true knowledge." The practical outcome of the Neo-Platonic movement was an attempt to revive the old Graeco-Roman religion,—Julian the apostate emperor had many with him. There we have the revival of the worship of Krishna in India, and the apologies for idolatry ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... 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, and the opponent had ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... hint that the warmth of the letters might easily lead to a suspicion of unseemly relationship, but the reviewer contends that virtue and rectitude are preserved in the midst of such extraordinary tenderness, so that one may interpret it as a Platonic rather than a sensual affection. Yet this review cannot be designated as distinctive of German opinion, for it contains no opinion not directly to be derived from the editor's foreword, and that alone; indeed, the wording suggests decidedly that source. The ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... asserted 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 as frequently and on the same friendly footing; indeed, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... 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 ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... innocent and deceived victim finally discovers the true cause of this change of manner. Some women who are ill-treated in this way, preserve their love for their husbands, while others never pardon the slightest infidelity, not even an innocent platonic affection, in ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... teachings could 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 and polytheism, choose ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... two—cool, friendly notes, tinetured with a nonchalance she was far from feeling, had failed of their purpose, and save for a brief letter telling of his departure form Rouen, he had not given the slightest evidence of his appreciation of her efforts toward a platonic reconciliation. She had not despaired of him and did not despair of him now, for it was one of her maxims that a clever woman—a woman as clever as she was—could have any man in the world if she set her cap ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... excellently illustrated in Greek literature, where is to be found many a joke at which we are laughing to-day, as others have laughed through the centuries. Half a thousand years before the Christian era, a platonic philosopher at Alexandria, by name Hierocles, grouped twenty-one jests in a volume under the title, "Asteia." Some of them are still current with us as typical Irish bulls. Among these were accounts of the "Safety-first" enthusiast who determined ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Platonic Institute stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus turned it ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... writer who claims our attention is Sir Thomas Wyatt, the son of Sir Henry Wyatt. He was born in 1503, and educated at Cambridge. Early a courtier, he was imperilled by his attachment to Anne Boleyn, conceded, if not quite Platonic, yet to have never led him to criminality. Several of his poems were inspired by her charms. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the Great Charlemagne, or vice versa, he is constantly out of focus. The perfect reviewer would be (and the only reviewer whose reviews are worth reading is he who more or less approximates to this ideal) the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic philosopher who is "second best in everything," who has enough special knowledge not to miss merits or defects, and enough general knowledge to estimate the particular subject at, and not above, its relative value to the whole. There have been good critics ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... poured into this stream, as we approach the bloom of the Middle Ages, appears to have come from the brain of Michael Psellus. Mingling scriptural texts, Platonic philosophy, and theological statements by great doctors of the Church, with wild utterances obtained from lunatics, he gave forth, about the beginning of the twelfth century, a treatise on The Work of Demons. Sacred science was vastly enriched thereby in various ways; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a fair-haired, pretty little German, with a chubby, almost childish little face, and confidingly soft blue eyes. She was very kind and sentimental: she loved Mattison, Uhland, and Schiller, and repeated their verses very sweetly in her timid, musical voice. Pasinkov's love was of the most platonic. He only saw his beloved on Sundays, when she used to come and play at forfeits with the Winterkeller children, and he had very little conversation with her. But once, when she said to him, 'mein lieber, lieber Herr Jacob!' ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... girl will see a great deal of each other, unless you banish or imprison the Mowbrays. There'll be many dances together, many calls; in fact, a serial romance instead of a short story. Why shouldn't his Majesty know the pleasure of a—platonic friendship with a beautiful and ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... highest idea—gaze down on the profoundest emotion—and you will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. You become a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of metempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysterious consciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, and back travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the Four Hymns rank undoubtedly highest. For splendour of imagery, for harmony of verse, for delicate taste and real passion, the Epithalamion excels all other poems of its class, and the Four Hymns express a rapture of Platonic enthusiasm, which may indeed be answerable for the unreadable Psyches and Psychozoias of the next age, but which is itself married to immortal ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and mercurial temperament, he had, with a kind of passionate curiosity, adopted the role of a Platonic lover, and the libertine in his character had been subdued by the love of the eccentric. He had converted this love into a kind of adoration. He placed Elise upon the altar, and worshipped her as a saint to whom he had turned from the turmoil and wild lust of life, and in the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... dominated Jules Sandeau, Calmatta the mezzotinter, De Musset, Franz Liszt, Delacroix, Michel de Bourges—I have not the exact chronological order—and later Flaubert. The most lovable event in the life of this much loved woman was her old age affair— purely platonic—with Gustave Flaubert. The correspondence shows her to have been ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of self-preservation that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude. A 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 ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Here the human heart opens partly, disclosing unimaginable depths. Astarte becomes platonic. The miracle of the transformation of monsters by love is being accomplished. Hell is being gilded. The vulture is being metamorphosed into a bluebird. Horror ends in the pastoral. You think you are at Vouglans's and Parent-Duchatelet's; ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose thoughts are clearly explained in his language. There is no foreign element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. ...
— Symposium • Plato
... the rich members of the Casino, the superior judge, the doctors, the great proprietors, etc. Don Platon Peribanez, a silversmith in the Calle Mayor, represents the middle-class Conservatives; his people are less showy, but more in earnest and better disciplined; this Platonian or Platonic party is made up of chandlers, silversmiths, small merchants, and the poor priests. The friar, who represents the third Conservative nucleus, is Father Martin Lafuerza. Father Martin is prior of the Franciscan monastery, which was established here after the Order ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... about the house was extremely seemly. And a great many persons maintained that her friendship with the Baron was entirely innocent, supporting the view by the gentleman's mature age, and ascribing to him a Platonic liking for Madame Marneffe's pleasant wit, charming manners, and conversation—such a liking as that of the late lamented Louis XVIII. for ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... undertake the long journey. "The journey back will be detestable," I muttered, and taking up the pen again I wrote: "Your letter contains a phrase which fills me with dismay: you say, 'Virtue must be its own reward,' and this would seem that you are determined to be more aggressively Platonic than ever. Doris, this is ill news indeed; you would not have me consider ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... plumpness of her face was matched by the comely plumpness of her figure; it glided smoothly over the ground; it flowed in sedate undulations when she walked. There are not many men who could have observed Mrs. Lecount entirely from the Platonic point of view—lads in their teens would have found her irresistible—women only could have hardened their hearts against her, and mercilessly forced their way inward through that fair and smiling surface. Magdalen's first glance ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... established his own identity and position, and was not long in convincing the investigators that his connection with the stranded company was of a purely philanthropic nature,—yes, even platonic, he asseverated with some heat when the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... woman had lived on very bad terms with her late husband, that she had on many occasions exhibited strong symptoms of possessing a very vindictive temper, and that during the farmer's lifetime she had openly manifested rather more than a Platonic preference for the man whom she subsequently married. Suspicion was generally excited: people began to doubt whether the first husband had died fairly. At length the proper order was applied for, and his body was disinterred. On examination, enough ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the streets with me. How do you know that you are even Colonel Rufford's daughter?" She did not know what these words meant. She thought of her mother as sleeping beneath the arches whilst the snow fell. That was the impression conveyed to her mind by the words "on the streets". A Platonic sense of duty gave her the idea that she ought to go to comfort her mother—the mother that bore her, though she hardly knew what the words meant. At the same time she knew that her mother had left her father with another ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of Logos—to such height does the sage soar in his ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... The same concept is found in the Platonic Dialogue between Sokrates and Euthyphron. The philosopher asks the diviner to tell what is holy and what impiety. "That which is pleasing to the gods is holy, and that which is not pleasing to them is impious" promptly replies the mantis, "To be holy is to be just," said ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... possibility that remained was a Platonic friendship, and Briscoe accepted the situation in excellent humour. 'Ever since he came to know himself,' again it is Moll that speaks, 'he always deported himself to me with an abundance of regard, calling me his Aunt.' And his aunt she remained unto the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... as it 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
... young, and are only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. The whole thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic) Ideas, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also do away ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... agricultural world seems practicable by such means, even without any general replanting of the forests; and the cost of one year's warfare—or in some countries of that armed peace which has been called "Platonic war"—if judiciously expended in a combination of both methods of improvement, would secure, to almost every country that man has exhausted, an amelioration of climate, a renovated fertility of soil, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... half-trapes: A length of night-gown rich Phantasia trails, Olinda wears one shift, and pares no nails: Some in C——l's Cabinet each act display, When nature in a transport dies away: Some more refin'd transcribe their Opera-loves On Iv'ry Tablets, or in clean white Gloves: Some of Platonic, some of carnal Taste, Hoop'd, or un-hoop'd, ungarter'd, or unlac'd. Thus thick in Air the wing'd Creation play, When vernal Phoebus rouls the Light away, A motley race, half Insects and half Fowls, Loose-tail'd and dirty, May-flies, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... 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 Divine ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... friends, in spite of the reiterated invitations of Mrs. Sevenoaks—it became full Sevenoaks in the second year. Then one day near the Easter rest she felt lonely and without a soul to understand her in the world, and her mind ran once more on what is called Platonic friendship. Fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphere of domesticity, but no doubt he had his lonely hours. Did he ever think of those days in Rome, gone now beyond recalling? No one had understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. It would be a sort of melancholy ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Plotinus,[276] a Platonic philosopher, had, it is said, a familiar demon, who obeyed him from the moment he called him, and was superior in his nature to the common genii; he was of the order of gods, and Plotinus paid continual ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... 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
... we have said, formed his morals on the Platonic model, yet he perfectly agreed with the opinion of Aristotle, in considering that great man rather in the quality of a philosopher or a speculatist, than as a legislator. This sentiment he carried a great way; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of this world: the painter's L'Amour paisible, Love disarmed, seated in the shadows, which the poet of Theos wished to engrave upon a sweet cup of spring; a smiling Arcadia; a Decameron of sentiment; a tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without desire, audacious gestures ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... live in such an atmosphere of long words. It is a cruel comment on the purity of the Victorian Age, that the age ended (save for the bursting of a single scandal) in a thing being everywhere called "Art," "The Greek Spirit," "The Platonic Ideal" and so on—which any navvy mending the road outside would have stamped with a word as vile and as vulgar as ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of her love, which she believed was returned, the wrong done by her to her cavalier, and the experience of an unknown pleasure, emboldened the fair Marie, who fell into a platonic love, gently tempered with those little indulgences in which there is no danger. From this cause sprang the diabolical pleasures of the game invented by the ladies, who since the death of Francis the First feared the contagion, but wished to gratify their lovers. To these ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... his keen white face, Dark smouldering eyes, and black, dishevelled hair; Chapman, with something of the steady strength That helms our ships, and something of the Greek, The cool clear passion of Platonic thought Behind the fringe of his Olympian beard And broad Homeric brows, confronting ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... us and useful to the Republic. The more various the anxieties, the greater your glory. Let that glory beam forth, not in our Palace only, but be reflected in far distant Provinces. Let your prudence be equal to your power; yea, let the fourfold virtue [of the Platonic philosophy] be seated in your conscience. Remember that your tribunal is placed so high that, when seated there, you should think of nothing sordid, nothing mean. Weigh well what you ought to say, seeing that it is listened to by so many. Let the public records contain nothing [of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Velletri, shrugging his shoulders; "instead of pursuing the little one with platonic declarations, you ought to try to break ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... money during the Revolution,—a period when contraband salt-traders made enormous profits by reason of the reaction that set in against the gabelle. He prudently left his wife at home, where Bebelle, as he called her, was supported under his absence by a platonic passion for a handsome clerk who had no other means than his salary,—a young man named Bonnac, belonging to the second-class society, where he played the same role that his master, the notary, played ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Christology is far more complex. Besides the Pharisaic Messiah, and the records of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, we have now to reckon with the Jewish-Alexandrian idea of the generic, archetypal man, which is unintelligible without reference to the Platonic philosophy. Philo is here a great help towards understanding one of the most difficult parts of the Apostle's teaching. We have also, fully developed, the mystical doctrine of the Spirit of Christ immanent in the soul of the believer, a conception which was the core of St. Paul's personal ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 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
... the police, after the fashion of cockchafers, made by cruel children to fly at the end of a string. He became one of those fugitive and timid beings whom the law, with a sort of coquetry, arrests and releases by turn—something like those platonic fishers who, in order that they may not exhaust their fish-pond, throw immediately back in the water the fish which has just come out of the net. Without a suspicion on his part that so much honor had been done to so sorry a subject, he had a special bundle of memoranda in ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee |
