Plutarch Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.
-
When asked why he parted with his wife, Cæsar replied, 'I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.'
-
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, 'That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.''
-
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
-
A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it."
-
Said Periander, 'Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.'
-
He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.
-
Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.
-
The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.
-
The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
-
Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
-
Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.
-
Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house.
-
He that first started that doctrine, that knavery is the best defense against a knave, was but an ill teacher, advising us to commit wickedness to secure ourselves.
-
'You speak truth,' said Themistocles; 'I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens'.
-
The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.
-
Menenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: 'It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites.'
-
Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.
-
A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line.
-
In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing.
-
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: 'Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?'
-
For many, as Cranton tells us, and those very wise men, not now but long ago, have deplored the condition of human nature, esteeming life a punishment, and to be born a man the highest pitch of calamity; this, Aristotle tells us, Silenus declared when he was brought captive to Midas.