Plutarch Quotes
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There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: 'Know thyself,' 68 and 'Nothing too much;' and upon these all other precepts depend.
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The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
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Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns, for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life.
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It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.
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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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Let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted.
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Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye.
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What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
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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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It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results.
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What can they suffer that do not fear to die?
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Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies.
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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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The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it.
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One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.
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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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If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax.
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It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
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But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country's interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.
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According to the proverb, the best things are the most difficult.
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Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
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Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.
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I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but now were beings endowed with movement, perception and with voice. …but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that portion of life and time it had been born in to the world to enjoy.
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As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,-which sort was the best. 'That,' said he, 'which is unexpected.'