Plutarch Quotes
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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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Nature without learning is like a blind man; learning without Nature, like a maimed one; practice without both, incomplete. As in agriculture a good soil is first sought for, then a skilful husbandman, and then good seed; in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the teacher to the husbandman, precepts and instruction to the seed.
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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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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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Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs.
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If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
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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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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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Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy.
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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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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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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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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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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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Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.
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The soul of man... is a portion or a copy of the soul of the Universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the Universe.
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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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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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Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen than it inspires an impulse to practice.
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Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own.
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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.'
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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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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.