Plutarch Quotes
-
Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
-
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.
-
There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue.
-
It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.
-
The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
-
When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.
-
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.
-
Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.
-
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?'
-
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
-
When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.
-
Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs.
-
Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
-
God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.
-
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.
-
The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
-
Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
-
Abstain from beans; that is, keep out of public offices, for anciently the choice of the officers of state was made by beans.
-
Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.
-
If any man think it a small matter, or of mean concernment, to bridle his tongue, he is much mistaken; for it is a point to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.
-
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.
-
The belly has no ears.
-
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.
-
Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. 'Yes,' said he, 'if there were any kings there to run with me.'