Plutarch Quotes
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When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.
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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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Either is both, and Both is neither.
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Caesar's wife should be above suspicion.
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To sing the same tune, as the saying is, is in everything cloying and offensive; but men are generally pleased with variety.
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Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses.
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It is not the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered; but very often an action of small note. An casual remark or joke shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles.
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The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
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When a man's struggle begins within oneself, the man is worth something.
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Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.
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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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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.
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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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Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, 'that,' said he, 'the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me.'
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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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Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.
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Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye.
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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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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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Xenophanes said, 'I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.'
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Painting is silent poetry.
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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.