Plato, Meno, section 77b

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[77b] whole and sound, and tell me what it is. The pattern you have now got from me.

Meno
Well, in my view, Socrates, virtue is, in the poet's words, “to rejoice in things honorable and be able for them”¹; and that, I say, is virtue—to desire what is honorable and be able to procure it.

Socrates
Do you say that he who desires the honorable is desirous of the good?

Meno
Certainly.

Socrates
Implying that there are some who desire the evil, and others the good? Do not all men,

1 Perhaps from Simonides.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967.

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