Plutarch Quotes
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The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing.
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It is wise to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.
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The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
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Said Periander, 'Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.'
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When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself.
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Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
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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.
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Painting is silent poetry.
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Antiphanes said merrily that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible; so that the words spoken in winter articulated next summer.
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Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.
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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."
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Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
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He made one of Antipater's recommendation a judge; and perceiving afterwards that his hair and beard were coloured, he removed him, saying, 'I could not think one that was faithless in his hair could be trusty in his deeds.'
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The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
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When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.
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Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.
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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?'
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Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
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The belly has no ears.
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For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
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When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something.
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Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
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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.
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It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.