Plutarch Quotes
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Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.
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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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Like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead.
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Cato the elder wondered how that city was preserved wherein a fish was sold for more than an ox.
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Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are.
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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.
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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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God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.
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Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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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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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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Xenophanes said, 'I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.'
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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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Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.
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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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When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.
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The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
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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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Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
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When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something.
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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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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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Abstain from beans; that is, keep out of public offices, for anciently the choice of the officers of state was made by beans.