7.42
But the pleasantest experience of all is to prove yourself better than I am, to make me your servant; and, so far from having cause to fear that as you grow older you may be less honoured in the household, to feel confident that with advancing years, the better partner you prove to me and the better housewife to our children, the greater will be the honour paid to you in our home.
7.43
For it is not through outward comeliness that the sum of things good and beautiful is increased in the world, but by the daily practice of the virtues. Such was the tenor of my earliest talks with her, Socrates, so far as I can recall them.
8.1
And did you find, Ischomachus, that they acted as a stimulus to her diligence? I asked. Yes, indeed, answered Ischomachus, and I recollect that she was vexed and blushed crimson, because she could not give me something from the stores when I asked for it.
8.2
And seeing that she was annoyed, I said: Don’t worry, dear, because you cannot give me what I am asking for. For not to be able to use a thing when you want it is poverty unquestionably; but a failure to get the thing that you seek is less grievous than not to seek it at all because you know that it does not exist. The fact is, you are not to blame for this, but I, because I handed over the things to you without giving directions where they were to be put, so that you might know where to put them and where to find them.
8.3
My dear, there is nothing so convenient or so good for human beings as order. Thus, a chorus is a combination of human beings; but when the members of it do as they choose, it becomes mere confusion, and there is no pleasure in watching it; but when they act and chant in an orderly fashion, then those same men at once seem worth seeing and worth hearing.
