"What good do you have or what pleasure do you know, if you do nothing to get them? You don't even await the desire for pleasant things but fill yourself with all things before you desire them: eating before you're hungry, drinking before you're thirsty; for good eating getting yourself cooks, for good drinking buying expensive wines and running around in the summertime in search of snow; for good sleeping you buy not only soft blankets but bed frames too. For it is not toil but the tedium of having nothing to do that makes you long for sleep. You force lust when there is no need, by all kinds of tricks and by using men as women: thus you train your own friends, running riot at night and sleeping through the best part of the day."

Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.30 (This is excerpted from Socrates's retelling of The Choice of Hercules, in which Virtue, who is here speaking, warns Hercules not to follow Vice.)

"All things are full of Gods."

Thales

"The consort I invoke of Jove divine,
Source of the holy, sweetly speaking Nine;
Free from th’oblivion of the fallen mind,
By whom the soul with intellect is join’d.
Reason’s increase and thought to thee belong,
All-powerful, pleasant, vigilant, and strong.
‘Tis thine to waken from lethargic rest
All thoughts deposited within the breast;
And nought neglecting, vig’rous to excite
The mental eye from dark oblivion’s night.
Come, blessed pow’r, thy mystics’ mem’ry wake
To holy rites, and Lethe’s fetters break."

Orphic Hymn to Mnemosyne, or the Goddess of Memory

"The fountain and origin of all beings is the Good. For what everything strives for, and what everything stretches up towards, is the origin and goal of all things. The Good produces everything from itself, both the first things, and the intermediate things, and the lowest things. But it produces the first things contiguous to it and like itself. One Goodness produces many goodnesses, one Simplicity produces many simplicities, one Henad above all henads produces many henads, and one Origin produces many origins. For the same thing is One, and Origin, and Good, and God, since God is the first thing, and the cause of everything. But it is necessary that what is first must also be most simple, because what is composite in any way and has plurality is secondary to the one, from which the composite things and plurality come. ... It is also necessary that it should have the highest power, and all power. Superabundance of power means that in producing everything from itself it produces the things that are like it before the things that are unlike it. ... For all of the beings, which are differentiated from one another and are pluralised by their own proper differentia, are referred back each to their own single origin. (For instance, all beautiful things, whether in intellects, souls or bodies, are referred back to one fountain of beauty. ...)."

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus' Handbook 5.2-28

Socrates instead of Jesus; Plato instead of Paul. Proclus instead of Aquinas. Instead of the Psalms, the Homeric and Orphic Hymns. Instead of the Beatitudes, the Golden Verses. The Cave instead of the Crucifixion. Instead of the parables, the Choice and Labors of Hercules. Instead of the Old Testament histories, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Metamorphoses and the Aeneid.

"No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself."

Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus

This is a nice, one page version of The Golden Verses. I have this version framed on my wall.

"Upon the king of all do all things turn; he is the end of all things and the cause of all good. Things of the second order turn upon the second principle, and those of the third order upon the third."

Plato(?), Letter II 312e

"To these four causes [of Aristotle] Plato adds a fifth in the model - what he himself calls the idea - this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work. ... God has within himself models like this of everything in the universe, his mind embracing the designs and calculations for his projects; he is full of these images which Plato calls ideas, eternal, immutable, ever dynamic. ... As Plato has it, then, there are five causes: the material, the agent, the form, the model and the end; and finally we get the result of all these. In the case of the statue, to use the example we began with, the material is the bronze, the agent is the sculptor, the form is the guise it is given, the model is what the sculptor making it copies, the end is what the maker has in view, and the final result is the statue itself. The universe as well, according to Plato, has all these elements. The maker is God; matter is the material; the form is the general character and lay-out of the universe as we see it; the model naturally enough is the pattern which God adopted for the creation of this stupendous work in all its beauty; the end is what God had in view when he created it, and that - in case you are asking what is the end God has in view - is goodness."

Seneca, Letters 65.7-10

Pythagoras Instructing the Fishermen, Salvator Rosa 1662

"While at the Olympic games, he was discoursing with his friends about auguries, omens, and divine signs, and how men of true piety do receive messages from the Gods. Flying over his head was an eagle, who stopped, and came down to Pythagoras. After stroking her awhile, he released her. Meeting with some fishermen who were drawing in their nets heavily laden with fishes from the deep, he predicted the exact number of fish they had caught. The fishermen said that if his estimate was accurate they would do whatever he commanded. They counted them accurately, and found the number correct. He then bade them return the fish alive into the sea; and, what is more wonderful, not one of them died, although they had been out of the water a considerable time. He paid them and left."
Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 25

"Of all beings therefore, and of the Gods that produce beings, one exempt and imparticipable cause pre-exists, - a cause ineffable indeed by all language, and unknown by all knowledge and incomprehensible, unfolding all things into light from itself, subsisting ineffably prior to, and converting all things to itself, but existing as the best end of all things. ... For all the Gods derive their existence as Gods from the first God. Whether therefore, it be lawful to denominate it the fountain of deity, or the kingdom of beings, or the unity of all unities, or the goodness which is generative of truth, or an hyparxis exempt from all these things, and beyond all causes, both the paternal and generative, let it be honored by us in silence, and prior to silence by union, and of the mystic end may it impart by illumination a portion adapted to our souls."

Proclus, The Theology of Plato 3.3

"And all such composition as lends itself to making audible musical sound is given in order to express harmony, and so serves this purpose well. And harmony, whose movements are akin to orbits within our souls, is a gift from the Muses, if our dealings with them are guided by understanding, not for irrational pleasure, for which people nowadays seem to make use of it, but to serve as an ally in the fight to bring order to any orbit in our souls that has become unharmonized, and make it concordant with itself. Rhythm, too, has likewise been given us by the Muses for the same purpose, to assist us. For with most of us our condition is such that we have lost all sense of measure, and are lacking in grace."

Plato, Timaeus 47d

"For Intellect does not exist without the intelligible, and the intelligible does not exist apart from Intellect..."

The Chaldean Oracles fr. 20

"It is difficulties that reveal what men amount to; and so, whenever you're struck by a difficulty, remember that God, like a trainer in the gymnasium, has matched you against a tough young opponent."

Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.1

Only a very gifted man can come to know that for each thing there is some kind, a being itself by itself; but only a prodigy more remarkable still will discover that and be able to teach someone else who has sifted all these difficulties thoroughly and critically for himself. ... Yet, on the other hand, Socrates, said Parmenides, if someone, having an eye on all the difficulties we have just brought up and others of the same sort, won't allow that there are forms for things and won't mark off a form for each one, he won't have anywhere to turn his thought, since he doesn't allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same. In this way he will destroy the power of dialectic entirely.

Plato, Parmenides 135b-c

"Just as persons who are being initiated into the mysteries throng together at the outset amid tumult and shouting, and jostle against one another, but when the holy rites are being performed and disclosed the people are immediately attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy: about its portals also you will see great tumult and talking and boldness, as some boorishly and violently try to jostle their way towards the repute it bestows; but he who has succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, as though a shrine were opened, adopts another bearing of silence and amazement, and 'humble and orderly attends upon' reason as upon a god."

Plutarch, Moralia: Progress in Virtue 81d

“He [Apollo] holds the Graces in his right hand and his bow and arrows in the left because he heals faster than he harms”

Marcobius, Saturnalia

Giant of gold! king of fire in the mind,
Ruler of light; with you, above all else,
The splendid source of life’s prolific fount;
And from on high you pour the wealth of your
Harmonic streams into our world of matter here.
Hear! for high above, on planes of ether,
And in the world’s bright middle realm you reign,
While all things by your sovereign power are filled
With mind-enflaming, providential care.
The fires of stars surround your vigorous fire,
And ever in unwearied, ceaseless dance,
Their vivid dew on earth’s wide bosom drops.
By your eternal and repeated course
The hours and seasons come and go;
And elements opposed are joined in harmony,
In sight of your majestic beams, great king,
From deity ineffable and secret born.
Unmoving Fates will yield to your command,
Roll back the fatal thread of mortal lives;
For wide-extended sovereign sway is yours.
From your fair series of attractive songs,
Divinely charming, Phoebus leaps forth
into light in joy; and with his god-like harp,
To rapture strung, he calms the raging din
Of dire-resounding Matter’s mighty flood.
And from your gentle dance, repelling harm,
A healing Hymn expands its light,
Diffusing Health, and filling all the world
With streams of harmony.
You, too, they celebrate in sacred song
The illustrious source whence mighty Bacchus came;
In matter’s utmost churning depths they chant
“Euan Ate” to you forever,
While others sound your praise in tuneful verse,
As famed Adonis, delicate and fair.
Ferocious daemons, noxious to mankind,
Dread the dire anger of your rapid scourge;
These Daemons plot a thousand ills,
And hatch their plans for wretched souls
That founder in life’s dreadful-sounding seas.
Enslaved and shackled by the body’s chains,
Souls lose all thought of fire sublime
And in the dark abyss they writhe.
O best of gods, spirit blessed and crowned with fire,
Image of nature’s all-producing god,
And leader of our souls to realms of light-
Hear! and purify my stains of guilt;
Receive the supplication of my pleas,
And wash away the poison from my wounds!
Release me from the torments of my sins,
And mitigate the swift, all-seeing eye
Of justice, boundless in its view!
By your pure law, the constant foe of evil,
Direct my steps, and pour your sacred light
In rich abundance on my darkened soul!
Dispel the dismal and malignant shades
Of darkness, pregnant with invenomed ills!
Give me strength! And give my body
Health, whose presence splendid gifts imparts.
Give lasting fame; and give that sacred care
That fair-haired muses, long ago,
Gave to my pious forebears.
Add, if it please you, o, all-bestowing god,
Reward my piety with your enduring wealth;
Because the power and strength of all
The Universe invests your throne.
And if the whirling spindle of the fates
Spins threats and dangers from web of stars,
May your arrows, rays of light, sound through the air
And vanquish ere it falls the coming ill.

Proclus - hymn to the sun 🌞

"Just as comedies contain ridiculous lines, which, though inferior in themselves, add a certain charm to the play as a whole, so, although if you took vice on its own you might censure it, the universe as a whole does not find it useless."

Chrysippus, quoted in Plutarch, On Common Conceptions 1065d

"The authors of the Orphic hymns supposed Zeus to be the mind of the world, and that he created all things therein, containing the world in himself. ... Zeus, therefore, is the whole world, animal of animals, and god of gods; but Zeus, that is, inasmuch as he is the mind from which he brings forth all things, and by his thoughts creates them."

Porphyry, On Cult Images fr. 3