Plutarch Quotes
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The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants.
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He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.
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A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
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The generous mind adds dignity to every act, and nothing misbecomes it.
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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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Abstain from beans; that is, keep out of public offices, for anciently the choice of the officers of state was made by beans.
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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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When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.
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Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.
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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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Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.
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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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Be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.
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Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy.
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There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, 'Either is both, and Both is neither.'
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Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead.
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Leo Byzantius said, 'What would you do, if you saw my wife, who scarce reaches up to my knees?… Yet,' went he on, 'as little as we are, when we fall out with each other, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.'
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Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.
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A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else.
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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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When Alexander asked Diogenes whether he wanted anything, 'Yes,' said he, 'I would have you stand from between me and the sun.'
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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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It was not important how many enemies there are, but where the enemy is.
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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.