Plutarch Quotes
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Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy.
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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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The belly has no ears.
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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.'
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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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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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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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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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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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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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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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Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.
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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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A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, 'I do not believe you can do as much.' 'True,' said he, 'but every goose can.'
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Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars).
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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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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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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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Knavery is the best defense against a knave.
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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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It was the saying of Bion, that though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.
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If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax.
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A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
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Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm of Antigonus. 'That,' said he, 'is too little for a king to give.' 'Why, then,' said the other, 'give me a talent.' 'And that,' said he, 'is too much for a Cynic (or, for a dog) to receive.'