Quotes About Plutarch

#1. Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.

Plutarch

#2. For the wise man, every day is a festival.

Plutarch

#3. I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up.

Plutarch

#4. If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.

Mortimer J. Adler

#5. When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I 'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living.

Plutarch

#6. Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.

Plutarch

#7. He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.

Plutarch

#8. A soldier told Pelopidas, "We are fallen among the enemies." Said he, "How are we fallen among them more than they among us?

Plutarch

#9. Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.

Plutarch

#10. Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies.

Plutarch

#11. It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.

Plutarch

#12. Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them.

Plutarch

#13. Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;
that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.

Laurence Sterne

#14. As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them.

Plutarch

#15. To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage

Plutarch

#16. The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations.

Plutarch

#17. It is a high distinction for a homely woman to be loved for her character rather than for beauty.

Plutarch

#18. Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises.

Plutarch

#19. I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is.

Plutarch

#20. Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast.

Plutarch

#21. Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.

Plutarch

#22. To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature.

Plutarch

#23. The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Plutarch

#24. When Plutarch says that a city might sooner subsist without a geographical site than without belief in the gods, his words would not have appeared strange to his countrymen at any time.']

Michael Oakeshott

#25. Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.

Plutarch

#26. Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.

Plutarch

#27. Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron.

Plutarch

#28. Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars).

Plutarch

#29. Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall.

Plutarch

#30. We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.

Plutarch

#31. But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.

Plutarch

#32. take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful.

Plutarch

#33. Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man.

Plutarch

#34. I see the cure is not worth the pain.

Plutarch

#35. Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.

Plutarch

#36. The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.

Plutarch

#37. It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.

Plutarch

#38. For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it.

Plutarch

#39. I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.

Plutarch

#40. Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield
themselves up when taken little by little.

Plutarch

#41. Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.

Joseph Addison

#42. The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.

Plutarch

#43. Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Plutarch

#44. Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.

Plutarch

#45. When Anaxagoras was told of the death of his son, he only said, "I knew he was mortal." So we in all casualties of life should say "I knew my riches were uncertain, that my friend was but a man." Such considerations would soon pacify us, because all our troubles proceed from their being unexpected.

Plutarch

#46. After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: I came, I saw, I conquered.

Plutarch

#47. The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.

Plutarch

#48. Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.

Plutarch

#49. Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me.

Plutarch

#50. Time which diminishes all things increases understanding for the aging.

Plutarch

#51. All beyond this is portentous and fabulous, inhabited by poets and mythologers, and there is nothing true or certain.

Plutarch

#52. As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity.

Plutarch

#53. Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position.

Plutarch

#54. A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.

Plutarch

#55. Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

Plutarch

#56. When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself.

Plutarch

#57. The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.

Plutarch

#58. If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.

Plutarch

#59. He (Cato) used to say that in all his life he never repented but of three things. The first was that he had trusted a woman with a secret; the second that he had gone by sea when he might have gone by land; and the third, that had passed one day without having a will by him.

Plutarch

#60. It is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper.

Plutarch

#61. we ought not to let either our joy at their faults or our grief at their success be idle, but in either case we ought to reflect, how we may become better than them by avoiding their errors, and by imitating their virtues not come short of them.

Plutarch

#62. Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.

Plutarch

#63. Education and study, and the favours of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.

Plutarch

#64. The belly has no ears.

Plutarch

#65. Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real

Plutarch

#66. Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty.

Plutarch

#67. The saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, "The enemy's ships are more than ours," replied, "For how many then wilt thou reckon me?

Plutarch

#68. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter.

Plutarch

#69. To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt ... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal.

Plutarch

#70. Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation.

Plutarch

#71. Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs.

Plutarch

#72. He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it.

Plutarch

#73. The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

Plutarch

#74. If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

John D'Agata

#75. Abstain from beans. There be sundry interpretations of this symbol. But Plutarch and Cicero think beans to be forbidden of Pythagoras, because they be windy and do engender impure humours and for that cause provoke bodily lust.

Richard Taverner

#76. Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.

Plutarch

#77. Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.

Plutarch

#78. A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself.

Plutarch

#79. These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade.

Plutarch

#80. He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself

Plutarch

#81. When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

Plutarch

#82. When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, A fool cannot hold his tongue.

Plutarch

#83. Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.

Plutarch

#84. Being conscious of having done a wicked action leaves stings of remorse behind it, which, like an ulcer in the flesh, makes the mind smart with perpetual wounds; for reason, which chases away all other pains, creates repentance, shames the soul with confusion, and punishes it with torment.

Plutarch

#85. He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war.

Plutarch

#86. Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.

Plutarch

#87. Neither blame or praise yourself.

Plutarch

#88. There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, Either is both, and Both is neither.

Plutarch

#89. [It was] better to set up a monarchy themselves than to suffer a sedition to continue that must certainly end in one.

Plutarch

#90. As to Caesar, when he was called upon, he gave no testimony against Clodius, nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said, He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be clear of such a crime, but of the very suspicion of it.

Plutarch

#91. To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing.

Plutarch

#92. Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece.

Plutarch

#93. I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician.

Plutarch

#94. Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.

Plutarch

#95. From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra's irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages including, as he puts it, the language of flattery and essentially, to be able to turn people to her will - really a great political genius, in that respect.

Stacy Schiff

#96. Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

Plutarch

#97. Painting is silent poetry,
and poetry is painting that speaks.

Plutarch

#98. Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch

#99. Plutarch has written an essay on the benefits which a man may receive from his enemies; and among the good fruits of enmity, mentions this in particular, that by the reproaches which it casts upon us, we see the worst side of ourselves.

Joseph Addison

#100. Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!

Franz Grillparzer