Date: 380-360 B.C.

"The result of agreeing with the body and finding pleasure in the same things is, I imagine, that [the soul] cannot help becoming like it in character and training, so that it can never get entirely away to the unseen world, but it is always saturated with the body when it sets out, and so soon f...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to defend themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in ...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

He "who thinks that even the best of writings are but a memorandum for those who know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfe...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 54 B.C.

"And summon homewards the mistress, eager for her new husband, firm-prisoning her soul in love; as tight-clasping ivy, wandering here and there, wraps the tree around."

— Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 - c. 54 B.C.)

Date: 54 B.C.

"Ah, woeful one, with sorrows unending distraught, Erycina sows thorny cares deep in your bosom, since that time when Theseus fierce in his vigor set out from the curved bay of Piraeus, and gained the Gortynian roofs of the iniquitous ruler."

— Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 - c. 54 B.C.)

Date: 25 B.C.

"But, Venus, my devoted heart is ever at your service [your slave]. / Have mercy. Why in rancour burn the harvest that is yours?"

— Tibullus, Abius (c. 54-19 B.C.)

The soul is to the body as a scent is to the flower.

— Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)

Date: 58

"As in a tilled-field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labour was not spent in order to produce them--the man who sowed the field had another object in view he gained this over and above it--so pleasure is not [th...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

Date: 101

"Because the gods have given the vine, or wheat, we sacrifice to them: but because they have produced in the human mind that fruit by which they designed to show us the truth which relates to happiness, shall we not thank God for this?"

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

Date: 101

"Is, then, the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily?"

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)