Plutarch Quotes
-
To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, 'Prithee,' said Cleomenes, 'give me cocks that will kill fighting.'
-
When one asked him what boys should learn, 'That,' said he, 'which they shall use when men.'
-
The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
-
Said Periander, 'Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.'
-
God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.
-
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?'
-
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.
-
The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
-
Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
-
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.
-
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
-
When another is asked a question, take special care not to interrupt to answer it yourself.
-
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."
-
Socrates... said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
-
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.'
-
Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
-
Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.
-
The belly has no ears.
-
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.
-
'You speak truth,' said Themistocles; 'I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens'.
-
Painting is silent poetry.
-
When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.
-
Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare.
-
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.