Plutarch Quotes
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So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence.
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Solon being asked, namely, what city was best to live in. That city, he replied, in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.
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Julius Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia, but declared at the trial that he knew nothing of what was alleged against her and Clodius. When asked why, in that case, he had divorced her, he replied: Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion.
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Socrates thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart.
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Of the land which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbours, part they sold publicly, and turned the remainder into common; this common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and indigent, for which they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground.
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Where two discourse, if the anger of one rises, he is the wise man who lets the contest fall.
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As bees extract honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so sensible men often get advantage and profit from the most awkward circumstances.
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Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.
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Time is the wisest of all counselors.
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Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war.
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Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
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Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.
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Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.
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Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied.
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The most perfect soul, says Heraclitus, is a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a cloud.
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Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.
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Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless.
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We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.
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Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.
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An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave.
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This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center."
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Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
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I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.
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Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.