Plutarch Quotes
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Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades.
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The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best.
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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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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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Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. 'They are tall,' said he, 'and comely, but bear no fruit.'
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Knavery is the best defense against a knave.
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In his house he had a large looking-glass, before which he would stand and go through his exercises.
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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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Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses.
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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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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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Words will build no walls.
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Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood and slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and lions savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare.
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A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need.
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A fool cannot hold his tongue.
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Lysander, when Dionysius sent him two gowns, and bade him choose which he would carry to his daughter, said, 'She can choose best,' and so took both away with him.
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God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.
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Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well.
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Themistocles said to Antiphales, 'Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson'.
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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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Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.
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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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A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
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Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from an enemy.