Plutarch Quotes
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Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
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There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue.
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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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Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.
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Archimedes had stated, that given the force, any given weight might be moved; and even boasted that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this.
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Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
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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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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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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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When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, 'A fool cannot hold his tongue.'
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There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.
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The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it.
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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.
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When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.
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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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Either is both, and Both is neither.
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Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.
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To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, 'Prithee,' said Cleomenes, 'give me cocks that will kill fighting.'
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The belly has no ears.
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Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.