Plutarch Quotes
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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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Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.
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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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Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
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Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by love.
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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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Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses.
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The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
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Grief is natural; the absence of all feeling is undesirable, but moderation in grief should be observed, as in the face of all good or evil.
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When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something.
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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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Caesar's wife should be above suspicion.
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There is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue.
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As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,-which sort was the best. 'That,' said he, 'which is unexpected.'
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If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.
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He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.
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As it is in the proverb, played Cretan against Cretan.
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Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye.
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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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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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Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty.
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Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. 'Thy words,' said he, 'Aristodemus, smell of the apron.'
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What can they suffer that do not fear to die?
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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.