Plutarch Quotes
-
Character is simply habit long continued.
-
So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.
-
Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
-
He shall fare well who confronts circumstances aright.
-
Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm.
-
As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.
-
Socrates said, 'Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.'
-
I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up.
-
He who reflects on another man's want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself.
-
The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.
-
If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw.
-
Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does.
-
Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.
-
Euripides was wont to say, 'Silence is an answer to a wise man.'
-
Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.
-
Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof.
-
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.'
-
The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.
-
We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.
-
That we may consult concerning others, and not others concerning us.
-
Anacharsis said a man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favours and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
-
Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed.
-
When the candles are out all women are fair.
-
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.