“Was not their error that they forgot the solid truth of Hesiod’s saying that ‘The half is often more than the whole?’ He meant that when it is useful to get the whole, but the half is sufficient, then the modestly sufficient, the better, is more than the disproportionate, the worse.”

—Plato, from his Laws. As quoted in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.