Plutarch Quotes
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When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, 'I would accept it,' said Parmenio, 'were I Alexander.' 'And so truly would I,' said Alexander, 'if I were Parmenio.' But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.
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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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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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The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration.
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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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Time is the wisest of all counselors.
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Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.
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The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.
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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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Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.
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Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.
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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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Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless.
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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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The old proverb was now made good, 'the mountain had brought forth a mouse.'
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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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Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.
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A healer of others, himself diseased.
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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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Silence is an answer to a wise man.
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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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'Young men,' said Cæsar, 'hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.'