Plutarch Quotes
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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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No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.
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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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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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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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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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Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into.
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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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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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We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature.
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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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He was a man, which, as Plato saith, is a very inconstant creature.
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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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Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
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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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Anacharsis coming to Athens, knocked at Solon's door, and told him that he, being a stranger, was come to be his guest, and contract a friendship with him; and Solon replying, 'It is better to make friends at home,' Anacharsis replied, 'Then you that are at home make friendship with me.'
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What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.
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Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.
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Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, 'Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,-Sleep before Death.'
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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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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.