Plutarch Quotes
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After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. 'Your advice,' said Cicero, 'were good if we were to fight jackdaws.'
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The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.
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They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.
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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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Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.
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Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.
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He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves.
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Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.
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Vos vestros servate, meos mihi linquite mores You keep to your own ways, and leave mine to me.
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The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
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The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration.
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Said Scopas of Thessaly, 'We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.'
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Come back with your shield - or on it.
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Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
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Silence is an answer to a wise man.
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As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them.
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I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.
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'These Macedonians,' said he, 'are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.'
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By these criteria let Alexander also be judged! For from his words, from his deeds, and from the instruction' which he imparted, it will be seen that he was indeed a philosopher.
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Eat not thy heart; which forbids to afflict our souls, and waste them with vexatious cares.
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A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk's bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare . . . There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.
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And when the physician said, 'Sir, you are an old man,' 'That happens,' replied Pausanias, 'because you never were my doctor.'
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Forgetfulness transforms every occurrence into a non-occurrence.
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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.