Plato

“The highest mountain, the oldest books, the strangest people, there you will find the stone.”
― Athanasius Kircher

“No free man needs a God; but was I free?
How fully I felt nature glued to me
And how my childish palate loved the taste
Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!

My picture book was at an early age
The painted parchment papering our cage:
Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;
Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon
The iridule - when, beautiful and strange,
In a bright sky above a mountain range
One opal cloudlet in an oval form
Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm
Which in a distant valley has been staged -
For we are most artistically caged.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Look not upon nature, for her name is fatal.- Proc. in Plat. Th. 143”
― Proclus

“All things in the world of Nature are not controlled by Fate for the soul has a principle of its own.”
― Iamblichus