Plutarch Quotes
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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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Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself.
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Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
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I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.
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Such power I gave the people as might do, Abridged not what they had, now lavished new, Those that were great in wealth and high in place My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I held my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right.
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But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
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Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.
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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.
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'These Macedonians,' said he, 'are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.'
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Those are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
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Learn to be pleased with everything...because it could always be worse, but isn't!
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Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that 'It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece.'
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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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Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them.
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I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
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Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
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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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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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Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.
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Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
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When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, 'Action;' and which was the second, he replied, 'Action;' and which was the third, he still answered, 'Action.'
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King Agis said, "The Lacedaemonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are."
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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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Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.