Quotes from The Symposium

Quotations follow the Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff translation (Hackett Publishing, 1989) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

2. 3

   Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.

3. 4

   And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only.

4. 5

   Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.

5. 6

   From one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty.

6. 7

   Then love may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good.

7. 8

   He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair.

8. 9

   Love will make men dare to die for their beloved—love alone; and women as well as men.

9. 10

   He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.

10. 11

    He interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods.

11. 12

    He whom love touches not walks in darkness.

12. 13

    And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before.

13. 14

    For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only. The love of generation and of birth in beauty.

14. 15

    I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us.

15. 16

    Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods.

16. 17

    Then Love wants and has not beauty?