" With deft dialectical (and literary) skill Plato, whenever necessary, abstracts and rarifies mortal beauty into a matter of proportion, suitability, and truth until it becomes “that other beauty,” which conveniently resembles the nature of the good, which is also these things. But in the process of abstraction—in trying to find the face of beauty beyond the world of experience—what is lost is exactly that which makes the beautiful so. Indeed, whenever we chance to glimpse at beauty in the course of life, it never appears with a plaintiff or veil, but always in an easy grandeur. "

― Michael Shindler