Plutarch Quotes
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Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, attended by councillors, and shut up in forts; yet if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable.
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The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.
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We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.
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As those persons who despair of ever being rich make little account of small expenses, thinking that little added to a little will never make any great sum.
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Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
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It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.
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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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Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
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Character is simply habit long continued.
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The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
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To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, 'I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.'
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When he was in great prosperity, and courted by many, seeing himself splendidly served at his table, he turned to his children and said: 'Children, we had been undone, if we had not been undone'.
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The Epicureans, according to whom animals had no creation, doe suppose that by mutation of one into another, they were first made; for they are the substantial part of the world; like as Anaxagoras and Euripides affirme in these tearmes: nothing dieth, but in changing as they doe one for another they show sundry formes.
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Concerning the dead nothing but good shall be spoken. [Lat., De mortuis nil nisi bonum.]
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We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.
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Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.
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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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Socrates said, 'Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.'
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If we traverse the world, it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools and theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiseth not worship, prayer, and the like, no one ever saw.
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Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.
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The saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, 'The enemy's ships are more than ours,' replied, 'For how many then wilt thou reckon me?'
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A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line.
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Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.
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Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,-thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.