Plutarch Quotes
-
As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,-which sort was the best. 'That,' said he, 'which is unexpected.'
-
Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye.
-
He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.
-
Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty.
-
Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars).
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
-
A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.
-
As it is in the proverb, played Cretan against Cretan.
-
Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.
-
... being perpetually charmed by his familiar siren, that is, by his geometry, he neglected to eat and drink and took no care of his person; that he was often carried by force to the baths, and when there he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and with his finger draws lines upon his body when it was anointed with oil, being in a state of great ecstasy and divinely possessed by his science.
-
Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades.
-
When Alexander asked Diogenes whether he wanted anything, 'Yes,' said he, 'I would have you stand from between me and the sun.'
-
What can they suffer that do not fear to die?
-
And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, 'I have found it! Eureka!'
-
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn a limp.
-
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.'
-
Beauty is the flower of virtue.