At this [Hippothales] blushed; and I said to him, O Hippothales, thou son of Hieronymus! do not say that you are, or that you are not, in love; the confession is too late; for I see not only that you are in love, but that you are already far gone in your love. Simple and foolish as I am, the gods have given me the power of understanding these sorts of affections.

I can hardly suppose that you will affirm a man to be a good poet who injures himself by his poetry.

Then now, my dear youth, I said, you perceive that in things which we know everyone will trust us…and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will really be ours, for we will turn them to our good.

[P]eople really mean, as I suppose, that the good are like one another, and friends to on another; and that the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.

May not the truth be that, as we were saying, desire is the cause of friendship; for that which desires is dear to that which is desired at the time of desire? And may not the other theory have been just a long story about nothing?