Plato's Ladder of Love

““A lover who goes about this matter correctly must begin in his youth to devote himself to beautiful bodies. First, if the leader leads aright, he should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of any other and that if he is to pursue beauty of form he’d be very foolish not to think that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same. When he grasps this, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies, and relax this exaggerated passion for just one body, despising it and thinking it small. After this he must consider the beauty of souls more valuable than that of the body, so that if someone of decent soul has little bloom, he will be content to love and care for him."”