Plutarch Quotes
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No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.
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Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.
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To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.
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He was a man, which, as Plato saith, is a very inconstant creature.
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We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature.
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It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration,-nay, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.
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Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun.
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Grief is like a physical pain which must be allowed to subside somewhat on its own before medical treatment is applied.
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A soldier told Pelopidas, 'We are fallen among the enemies.' Said he, 'How are we fallen among them more than they among us?'
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Pompey had fought brilliantly and in the end routed Caesar's whole force... but either he was unable to or else he feared to push on. Caesar said to his friends: 'Today the enemy would have won, if they had had a commander who was a winner.'
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Pyrrhus said, 'If I should overcome the Romans in another fight, I were undone.'
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Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: 'For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother'.
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The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.
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Pittacus said, 'Every one of you hath his particular plague, and my wife is mine; and he is very happy who hath this only'.
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Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, 'Sir,' said he, 'in war there is no room for a second miscarriage.' Said one to Iphicrates, 'What are ye afraid of?' 'Of all speeches,' said he, 'none is so dishonourable for a general as ‘I should not have thought of it.''
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Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.
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Have in readiness this saying of Solon, 'But we will not give up our virtue in exchange for their wealth.'
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Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.
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All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
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Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles.
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Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.
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Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people,… he turned to his friend and said, 'Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other?'
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These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people; they call a spade a spade.
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That proverbial saying, 'Ill news goes quick and far.'