Plutarch Quotes
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Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.
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Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.
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The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.
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Be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.
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Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, 'Which would you rather be,-a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?'
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When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.
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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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Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, 'How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring?'
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He who cheats with an oath acknowledges that he is afraid of his enemy, but that he thinks little of God.
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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 soul of man... is a portion or a copy of the soul of the Universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the Universe.
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The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.
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Even a nod from a person who is esteemed is of more force than a thousand arguments or studied sentences from others.
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Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead.
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After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'
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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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Said Periander, 'Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.'
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Socrates... said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
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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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So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us.
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God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.
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Why does pouring oil on the sea make it clear and calm? Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves?
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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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Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.