Plutarch Quotes
-
The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.
-
Time is the wisest of all counselors.
-
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.
-
The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.
-
So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence.
-
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.
-
Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
-
Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.
-
Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.
-
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."
-
Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.
-
Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, 'Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?' Antagoras replied, 'Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?'
-
Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.
-
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.
-
Silence is an answer to a wise man.
-
Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, 'Pray,' said Lycurgus, 'do you first set up a democracy in your own house.'
-
'T is a wise saying, Drive on your own track.
-
Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.
-
Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment.
-
We rich men count our felicity and happiness to lie in these superfluities, and not in those necessary things.
-
He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.
-
He [Caesar] loved the treason, but hated the traitor.
-
Themistocles said that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can be shown only by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.
-
I would rather excel in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and possessions.