Kitap 17
20
This admonition of Taurus as to Plato's style not only did not deter me, but even encouraged me to try to equal the elegance of the Greek in a Latin rendering; and just as there are small and insignificant animals which through wantonness imitate everything which they have seen or heard, just so I had the assurance, not indeed to rival those qualities which I admired in Plato's style, but to give a shadowy outline of them, such as the following, which I patterned on those very words of his: Every act, in general, he says, is of this nature; it is in itself neither base nor honourable; as, for example, the things which we ourselves are now doing, drinking, singing, arguing. For none of these things is honourable in itself, but it becomes so by the manner in which it is done; if it is done rightly and honourably, it is then honourable; but if it is not rightly done, then it is shameful. It is the same with love; thus not every kind of love is honourable, not every kind is deserving of praise, but only that which leads us to love honourably.
