Date: c. 370-365 B.C.
"Let the soul be compared to a pair of winged horses and charioteer joined in natural union."
preview | full record— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Date: c. 370-365 B.C.
"There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul."
preview | full record— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Date: c. 370-365 B.C.
"At the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three parts--two having the form of horses and the third being like a charioteer; the division may remain."
preview | full record— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Date: 58
"To live happily, then, is the same thing as to live according to Nature: what this may be, I will explain. If we guard the endowments of the body and the advantages of nature with care and fearlessness, as things soon to depart and given to us only for a day; if we do not fall under their domini...
preview | full record— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
Date: 386
Reason or Ratio is a visitor who may be encountered when seeking the "real self" and one's "best good," but whether Reason is ourself or another, within us or without is not known.
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 413-427
"Does not Tully, disputing of the difference of governments, ... say, that we command our bodily members as sons, they are so obedient, and that we must keep a harder form of rule over our mind's vicious parts, as our slaves?"
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: c. 421
The soul "commands the body as a king commands his subjects or a parent his children. It commands lust as a master commands a slave, since it coerces and breaks it. Kings, emperors, magistrates, fathers, peoples rule their subjects and associates as the soul rules the body. Masters harass their s...
preview | full record— St. Augustine (354-430)
Date: 1257
"Therefore, sanctifying graces makes the soul the temple of God, the bride of Christ, and the daughter of the eternal Father."
preview | full record— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)
Date: 1257
"By these means, He makes the sinful soul, formerly the enemy of God, the den of the devil, and the slave of sin, to become the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the daughter of the eternal Father: all of which is brought about by a free and gracious INFUSION OF THE GIFT OF GRACE."
preview | full record— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)