Plutarch Quotes
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'These Macedonians,' said he, 'are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.'
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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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Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.
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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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The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants.
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Oh, what a world full of pain we create, for a little taste upon the tongue.
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It is easy to utter what has been kept silent, but impossible to recall what has been uttered.
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Come back with your shield - or on it.
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There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it.
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When asked why he parted with his wife, Cæsar replied, 'I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.'
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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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He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves.
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A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, 'I do not believe you can do as much.' 'True,' said he, 'but every goose can.'
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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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The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.
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Seeing the lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black; and he would often go out of doors, after his morning meal, without either shoes or tunic; not that he sought vain-glory from such novelties, but he would accustom himself to be ashamed only of what deserves shame, and to despise all other sorts of disgrace.
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I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than that they should say, 'Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow.'
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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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What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.
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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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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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Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.
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To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates a shoemaker's son for his mean birth, 'My nobility,' said he, 'begins in me, but yours ends in you.'