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: c. 10-8 BC
"format enim natura prius nos intus ad omnem / fortunarum habitum: iuvat aut inpellit ad iram / aut ad humum maerore gravi deducit et angit: / post effert animi motus interprete lingua" [For nature forms us first within to every modification of circumstances; she delights or impels us to anger, ...
preview | full record— Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BC - 8 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)