English wording
Translation
Benjamin Jowett — Translator · Ancient Greek → English
The wording shown here follows the represented English edition or translation.
Why the edition matters
Translations and editions can differ in wording, punctuation and emphasis, so the source attached to each quotation matters when exact phrasing is important.
Source identified1
“the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form.”
Voice: Reported speaker · Diotima, recounted by Socrates
The ascent described by Diotima shifts attention from outward appearance toward qualities of mind, making intellectual and moral beauty more important within this stage of the dialogue’s argument.
Source note: Symposium, Diotima’s ascent toward beauty as recounted by Socrates, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. This is one stage in an ancient philosophical account of beauty and love, not a modern psychological ranking of attractiveness.
Source identified2
“For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Aristophanes
Aristophanes presents love as a longing to recover wholeness, but the claim belongs to his deliberately mythic account of divided human beings rather than to a literal theory of human origins.
Source note: Symposium, Aristophanes’s speech, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. The sentence concludes the comic myth of humans split into halves; it is a speaker position inside Plato’s dialogue, not direct autobiography or anthropology by Plato.
Source identified3
“For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of wisdom”
Voice: Reported speaker · Diotima, recounted by Socrates
Diotima links love with philosophy by treating wisdom as something beautiful that the lover does not fully possess but continues to seek, placing philosophical desire between ignorance and completed wisdom.
Source note: Symposium, Socrates recounting Diotima’s teaching, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. The represented wording belongs to Diotima’s account of Love as intermediate between the wise and the ignorant.
Source identified4
“For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.”
Voice: Reported speaker · Diotima, recounted by Socrates
Ignorance becomes difficult to correct when a person feels no lack in understanding, because satisfaction with one’s present judgment removes the motivation to seek what is missing.
Source note: Symposium, Socrates recounting Diotima’s teaching, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. Diotima is a reported speaker within the dialogue; the passage is philosophical argument about ignorance and desire for wisdom.