Plutarch Quotes
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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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Statesmen are not only liable to give an account of what they say or do in public, but there is a busy inquiry made into their very meals, beds, marriages, and every other sportive or serious action.
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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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Courage and wisdom are, indeed, rarities amongst men, but of all that is good, a just man it would seem is the most scarce.
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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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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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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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Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
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The belly has no ears.
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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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Like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead.
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Apothegms are the most infallible mirror to represent a man truly what he is.
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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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The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it.
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When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.
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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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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 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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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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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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Painting is silent poetry.
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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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Cato the elder wondered how that city was preserved wherein a fish was sold for more than an ox.
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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.