If someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form? Do you think it would be a poor life for a human being to look there and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it? Or haven't you remembered that in that life alone, when he looks at Beauty in the only way what Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth no to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images) but to true virtue (because he is in touch with the true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he. Plato
About This Quote

The idea of the gods and mortals is a common one in both ancient and modern myth. The quote above is from one of the most famous passages in The Republic, Plato’s great dialogue on the nature of justice and injustice. In it, Socrates describes that the gods would find humans boring if they lived among them. While they might be at peace with them, they wouldn’t be attracted to them. That’s because their love would only be love of beauty, and mortals’ love is tainted by all sorts of imperfections: “love of beauty does not make a man good; it makes him desire to be good and to appear so to others, but he may talk to himself about virtue all he likes - he will never know how to practice it.”

Source: The Symposium

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